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What is the best IDE to use for programming in RPGILE for the AS/400 ? Can you connect to a 400 using Visual Studios IDE?

I'm a C# programmer who fell in love with Visual Studios and also am a lot younger than allot of the folks who have been working with rpg programming for years using the pdm editor.

My question, is there a way to code in RPGILE / connect to AS/400's in Visual Studios?

My follow up question - is there another IDE I should be using? Dear god, all I need is intellisense!

Thanks in advance, and much respect to the RPG programmers out there.

Community
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Yusha
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  • I voted you up but its actually a down vote. Your not supposed to ask questions that ask for recommendations. – danny117 Oct 16 '17 at 17:38

1 Answers1

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This has a close vote because typically tool recommendations are off topic for Stack Overflow. However, I will answer this because there are really only a few IDE's available.

RDi

Rational Developer for i is the official RPG development tool, and as of v6.1 of the operating system, the only editor for RPG from IBM that supports the full RPG spec. SEU was stabilized back at v6.1, and does not include support for any of the RPG or SQL goodness that has been added since then. Virtually every RPG program I write now will throw dozens of errors in SEU, and my system is only at v7.1 (for the moment).

MiWorkplace

Mihael Schmidt has a low cost alternative to RDi. For €27.50 (roughly $30) you get the most used features of RDi, but there are several features you will miss. The most significant of those, in my opinion, is the outline view. However, if you are on a tight budget, and you need to write RPG, or you are just learning, this is a capable IDE. There is a free version of this pre-configured for use with pub400.com.

Notepad++

Not really an IDE, with apologies to those who love it, but Liam Allan has provided a plugin for free-format RPG if you just need a quick and dirty editor that can color your code. He also has another plugin to let you execute remote commands and parse the compile error listing.

Orion

If your source is in the IFS, you can use Orion. Orion is an open source browser based editor that has been included in 5733OPS option 8. It is still a little lean, but may be a competitor to Notepad++ depending on your circumstances.

Visual Studio Code

Like Orion and Notepad++, your source must be in the IFS to use Visual Studio Code, but its popularity is growing, so I included it here. Note that this is not Visual Studio, but a seperate editor from Microsoft. You will want to install the RPG Language Plugin from Niels Liisburg to get the RPG source highlighting to work. Update 2021-03-02 Check out the new code-for-ibmi plug-in for VS Code.

Charles
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jmarkmurphy
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    Self plug / This plugin for compiling ILE languages from Npp: https://github.com/WorksOfBarry/IBMiCmd – Barry May 22 '17 at 15:17
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    One more possibility...IBM has packaged the open source, server based [Orion IDE](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/IBM%20i%20Technology%20Updates/page/Orion) for the i. – Charles May 22 '17 at 16:33
  • No need to apologize to Notepad++ fans: They don't consider their editor an IDE! If anything, the most rabid Notepad++ fans may well *actively disdain* IDEs as being too bloated. – John Y May 23 '17 at 20:26
  • Brian May has recently published an article on [RDi alternatives](http://www.mcpressonline.com/programming/rpg/rational-developer-for-i-alternatives). It basically amounts to this answer, but also mentions Visual Studio Code, which is generally well liked but should not be confused with Visual Studio. (These two have about as much in common as JavaScript and Java.) – John Y Jun 09 '17 at 16:31
  • I saw that the other day, and considered adding Visual Studio Code, but decided not to set that precedent. – jmarkmurphy Jun 09 '17 at 16:34
  • Sorry, what precedent would that be? – John Y Jun 09 '17 at 21:38
  • Fair enough, though (1) I don't expect that new ones will pop up very often, (2) they ought to be at least as good as the ones already here to justify an edit, and (3) the "proper" thing to do is to keep Stack Overflow answers up to date in the face of changing technology or other factors that render an answer not as good as it could be. I'm not trying to be critical - you've already done more than you need to because this question is technically off-topic. – John Y Jun 14 '17 at 03:40
  • Ok, so Visual Studio Code is getting popular enough that I decided to add it in. – jmarkmurphy Aug 07 '17 at 18:57
  • You can't recommend paid products on SO. – danny117 Oct 16 '17 at 17:38
  • @danny117 I have seen nothing restricting that, just advertisements. But I have no affiliation with Microsoft, or Visual Studio, and do not stand to benefit if someone buys it. BTW Visual Studio Code is not Visual Studio, and it is free. – jmarkmurphy Oct 16 '17 at 19:58
  • I didn't make up the rules. Read them sometime. This falls into that category. "What is the best", "What is the worst", "What is your favorite", "Which one don't you like" – danny117 Oct 16 '17 at 20:04
  • You've described both Orion and VS Code as "browser based", which isn't wrong, but they are built very, very differently. Orion is meant to run in any browser and communicate with essential server-side components. VS Code is pretty much a massive mod of a *specific* browser (Google's Chromium). That modded browser only exists as the core of the editor; you can't readily use that browser to surf the Web, for example. Whereas you can have Orion, Netflix, and Gmail all open in whatever browser you normally use to surf the Web. – John Y Nov 02 '17 at 22:23
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    ILEditor works fine for me as well. I think its a good option – Javed Ali Apr 30 '20 at 20:26
  • @JavedAli ILEditor is indeed a viable solution. It is newer than this post. – jmarkmurphy May 01 '20 at 11:23