VMS IDE Quick Start

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These are quick instructions for using VMS IDE for those already familiar with Visual Studio Code. It is assumed that you have VSCode installed.

The way VMS IDE works is it connects a directory on Linux/Windows/wherever VSCode is installed to a directory on VMS and synchronizes your files between these directories, so you can edit in VSCode and then build/run on VMS. So, before you start, you need a working SSH connection to a VMS system (username/password or keyfile) with a directory on it where you will be working.

Setting Up VMS IDE

1. Download the VMS IDE extension.

2. Download and unzip this workspace template.

3. Click File -> Open Workspace from File and choose ide-test.code-workspace from the workspace template directory.

4. Inside of VMS IDE, open ide-test.code-workspace and fill in your hostname or IP, username, and password or keyfile for the OpenVMS system.

5. Inside of VMS IDE, open .vscode/settings.json and fill in the vmssoftware.synchronizer.project.root with the path to your directory on VMS relative to the login directory of the user (for example, if you're JDOE and the directory is [JDOE.IDETEST], write "idetest"; if it's [JDOE.DEV.IDETEST], write "dev/idetest").

6. Put your project files that you will be working on in your new workspace directory. To start working on them, perform a full zip upload; press Ctrl+P and choose VMS-IDE: Upload files via Zip. If everything went well, check out your files on VMS, otherwise examine the log.

Using VMS IDE

To open the command menu in VSCode, press Ctrl+P. There are three commands you can use to upload VSCode files to VMS:

  • VMS-IDE: Upload Files via Zip (zips up files on the VSCode machine, SFTP's the zip archive to VMS and unzips there; good for starting/starting over).
  • VMS-IDE: Upload Files (compares files on both systems and SFTP's the missing/modified files to VMS).
  • VMS-IDE: Quick Upload (SFTP's to VMS the files changed/created since last upload).

We suggest you define a keyboard shortcut for quick upload:

1. Press Ctrl+K then Ctrl+S to open the VSCode Keyboard Shortcuts editor.

2. Using the search bar, find VMS IDE comands.

3. Double click the keybinding column next to the command in question, then follow the instructions in the popup to set the shortcut.

When starting to work on a VMS project with VMS IDE, always use 'Upload via Zip' first. Verify that the files are uploaded to VMS. Then, when you change the files, use 'Quick upload' or 'Upload files' to synchronize your changes with VMS.

You can also build your project on VMS with VMS IDE with MMS or DCL scripts. Check out Build_Configurations to see how it's done.

You can use the VMS Debugger inside of VMS IDE. See VMS_IDE_Debugger for instructions.

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