Re: Best way to convert from source PF to IFS source

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Not sure that there's a "best" way.  I've done it many different ways 
over the years:

1. CPYTOSTMF

2. FTP mget

3. QSH with Rfile

4. Written my own program with the IFS APIs.

All work just fine.

About using CCSID 1208, though, I have mixed feelings.  I do feel that 
it is the "right" way, in particular if source code is to be distributed 
to other systems, this is a very universal character set.   But, most of 
the compilers on IBM i work in EBCDIC -- so the compiler needs to 
convert the source code to EBCDIC.  Many have a hard time converting 
CCSID 1208 to EBCDIC because there isn't any one CCSID that supports all 
300,000 characters in UTF-8.  Most compilers have added parameters to 
allow you to pick which CCSID they use -- which is fine, but if you plan 
to distribute this code to many systems, all of the systems that will 
work with the code need to have the PTFs to enable this functionality, 
and sadly I have run into problems with that.   By contrast, if you 
store your source in CCSID 819 this is not usually a problem.


On 2/12/2024 10:58 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:
> We want to move all our source to the IFS.  Simply put that's where VSCode
> is best and GIT works.  So the question becomes, what is the best way to
> get source from a PF to the IFS?  I would also presume that it should have
> CCSID 1208 to be compatible with other things.
>
> We have about 30 libraries worth of source to move so a somewhat automated
> process would be nice, although since it's presumably a one time shot we
> may just do it manually.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Jim Oberholtzer
> Chief Technical Architect
> Agile Technology Architects