Do you need Endevor to use Team Build?

Using Team Build Standalone with Git

Modern AppDev practices are centered on Git so many organizations have been applying these capabilities to their mainframe applications using the award-winning Endevor Bridge for Git. Yet I occasionally hear customers without Endevor lament, ‘I wish we could adopt modern DevOps in a simple way too.’

You absolutely can!  Team Build is a lightweight build engine that supports Git-native workflows, meaning that you do not need to connect Git to Endevor to run builds, you can simply build the applications directly from the Git source.  It allows you to easily create and run builds for applications written in languages such as COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, C and Metal C and plugs directly into your enterprise orchestration tools, such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CICD, Azure Pipelines, Jenkins or any other CICD tool.  Builds are dependency-aware so you can incrementally build only what needs to be built.  It leverages a standard library of build functions but it can also be extended using the world’s most popular programming language, JavaScript, making it easy to get started and use.

Team Build Script Showing the Compilation of COBOL and HLASM artifacts into a Load Module

Team Build Stands on its Own

Of course, if you are using Endevor, you can easily automate the creation of those build projects.  Likewise, if you are using Bridge for Git, Team Build can be a handy way to perform a developer build without mapping every branch to Endevor.  But these are not the only ways to use Team Build.

Team Build projects can be quickly authored from existing source code using the out-of-the-box, JavaScript Standard Library for various languages.  Compiling and linking can be as simple as running from a directory of COBOL artifacts and invoking a compileAndBind function:

var cobol = require("bldz/std/exp/rules/cobol")

cobol.compileAndBind({

    syslibs: ["."],

    syslibs_binder: ["//CEE.SCEELKED"],

})

Existing JCL can be Converted by Team Build

Many teams have Build JCL they use for developer builds.  In other cases, the existing SCM and lifecycle automation will ultimately run the build by submitting JCL.  If that is the case then there is good news - Team Build can also be used to convert Build JCL into a build project.  Similarly, if you have useful JCL that you run as part of your development or deployment process, you can convert and extend it as well using Team Build’s exportz tool and call it from the Enterprise orchestrator of choice.

So Are You Recommending Git Native?

Team Build is as easy to use standalone with Git as it is to use with Endevor and Bridge for Git.  However, I don’t want that to be taken as us recommending that you perform a lift and shift migration to Git as a fast track to modernization.  There are still many considerations to take into account:

• Is the team ready?  

• Are your mainframe developers happy to change to Git or will forcing them to change risk them leaving along with critical tribal knowledge?

• How will  you deploy your applications?  

• How will you deal with the transition and things like shared code while the transformation is in progress?  

• How will you decompose your monolithic mainframe application repository?

These are all still valid questions and considerations, and because of this Endevor users may opt to go slowly and leverage tools like Explorer for Endevor or Bridge for Git, as well as Team Build as part of their transformation journey.   

What I do want you to know is that when you're ready to use Git, Team Build is ready to support your needs whether you use Endevor or not.  It has no hard ties to Endevor and was always meant to be used to support organizations on a journey of modernizing their mainframe application development process, regardless of where they started - commercial mainframe SCMs like ChangeMan, ISPW, Panvalet, Librarian or even a homegrown SCM.  

If any of this sounds relevant to you and your organization - please reach out to me at vaughn dot marshall at broadcom.com.  We are working daily with customers who are on a modernization journey and we’d love to understand your use cases and requirements as we continue to build out the capabilities in our suite.