A Handful of Items.

[Russ-illumifin]

I have found a handful of items. Maybe these should be separate issues, but I am going to list them here:

1. Compile fails on long names. If I have an RPGLE file name of "longprogramname.pgm.sqlrpgle" and I run a compile, it fails. The error provided is that there is no rule, but there is a rule, and the rule has a 10-character object name. If I run the build to create the program, the build creates it successfully.
2. The processes fail if there is a space in the deploy folder name. For example, a folder named "/Home/Russ/My Application" will fail to deploy. We obviously work with this by removing the space. Should spaces be allowed?
3. If an ADDMSGD command in a CL pseudo source file has a "+" in the text (within the quotes), the ADDMSGD command fails.
4. When the pseudo code runs to add messages to a message file, it takes a long time. This isn't a problem but I'm curious if there may be an explanation why it takes so long.

A feature we would like to see is to build just the objects that change. This may be counter to what a "build" process is, but that is how we do things now (I imagine it is how many shops traditionally create their code). This would eliminate the need to have multiple copies of data in build libraries for each Git branch being worked on. Our dataset isn't huge but having 5 or more branch library copies is not ideal. Or is there another solution?

Where can I learn how to debug the extension and code that runs on the IBM i? I would like to help identify any items I encounter and provide a resolution rather than putting them all on you. Is there a good tutorial or documentation on how to do this?

[Russ-illumifin]

A couple of follow-up comments:

1. The feature to not require the entire codebase to be built: I determined that the library list can be set up the same way we would do on the IBM i to compile. Then, rather than doing a full build, we just compile the changed code into the current library.
2. From another post I did about setting compile options. I found (once again) the documentation page that describes how to override parms for a program or other object: https://ibm.github.io/ibmi-bob/#/prepare-the-project/rules.mk?id=overriding-compile-settings
3. I also found an overview of how to contribute or make my own changes. I still haven't gotten into that yet.

Learning everything has been a bit uncomfortable because it isn't the typical IBM i developer way of doing things. I have used this every day for months now and I have come to understand and appreciate the efforts put into this. Our dev team is moving to using this along with Git in Azure DevOps.