Additional Software Requirements

In order to enable the full functionality of this extension, you need the following software installed:

• A licensed version of one of the products listed below on the same machine. See the table for what features are supported by what products.

  You must specify the install path for the installed product in the Micro Focus COBOL: Install Location setting of the extension.

  The earliest supported release is 7.0 unless a newer version is required by a specific feature:

  Rocket Software product (release 7.0 or later)	Compiling	Debugging Native COBOL code	.NET COBOL debugging	JVM COBOL debugging	Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework	Language Server functionality
  Rocket® Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio, Rocket® Visual COBOL® for Visual Studio					2	1
  Rocket® Enterprise Developer for Eclipse, Rocket® Visual COBOL for Eclipse				2	2	1
  Rocket® Enterprise Developer Build Tools or Rocket® Visual® COBOL Build Tools (Windows only)				2	2	1
  Rocket® Enterprise Server, Rocket® COBOL Server
  Rocket® Visual COBOL® Development Hub, Rocket® Enterprise Developer Unix Components				2	2	1

  • ¹The COBOL Language Server requires release 8.0 or later of this product.
  • ²Requires release 9.0 or later of this product.
• .NET - the supported version depends on the version of either Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer that you use. Check the either Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer product Help for information. .NET is required for:
  • MSBuild and for the COBOL Language Server. MSBuild support is only available on Windows platforms.
  • On Windows for the automatic determination of any Compiler directives specified in the .cblproj project files, created with either Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio.
• Apache Ant - this is required to build Eclipse COBOL project (.cobolbuild) files. Ant must be installed and added to the PATH.
• C# extension - debugging of .NET COBOL projects requires Microsoft's C# extension version 1.23.12 or later for Visual Studio Code.
• Language Support for Java(TM) by Red Hat extension - debugging of JVM COBOL projects requires the Language Support for Java(TM) by Red Hat extension version 1.16.0 or later for Visual Studio Code.
• Rocket^® JVM COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code - this is required for JVM COBOL debugging. This will be installed automatically when you register the JVM support inside Visual Studio Code. See Debugging JVM COBOL Projects.
• Java - debugging JVM COBOL projects requires Java 17. You must specify the path to the bin directory on the Java install location to the PATH environment variable. Your licensed Rocket Software product comes with AdoptOpenJDK.

  Alternatively, you can specify which Java to use from the settings of the Language Support for Java(TM) by Red Hat extension - see the Java > Jdt > LS > Java: Home setting.

• xterm - debugging on Linux requires xterm, the terminal emulator for the X Window System, which is part of your Linux distribution but is not installed by default. Use your Linux installation media to install it.

The Language Server features, compiling, and debugging require that you specify the location of the prerequisite Rocket Software product in the Rocket COBOL extension settings:

1. In Visual Studio Code, click View > Extensions.
2. Click (Manage) for the Rocket COBOL extension, and click Extension Settings.
3. Specify the full path to the installation directory of the licensed Rocket Software product in the Micro Focus COBOL: Install Location field.