z/OS Open Source Guild - Initial Meeting Discussion - August 17, 2022 at 11am EST

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Agenda

• Background on z/OS Open Source Initiative (10mins)
• Demo (15 mins)
• Overview of Getting Started Guide (5 mins)
• Starter Items: https://github.com/search?q=user%3AZOSOpenTools+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22help+wanted%22 (5 mins)
• Polling Questions (10 mins)
• Open Discussion (15 mins)

How to Join?

Join link: https://ibm.webex.com/ibm/j.php?MTID=m72857a0933fbcd1c58c116a13c9f1e7b
Webinar number: 145 105 4264
Webinar password: QamxS8QX2m7 (72697879 from phones)

Date and Time

• August 17, 11am-12pm EST (8am PST)

Powerpoint Slides

Open Source Guild August 2022.pptx

Survey Results

Guild Survey

Note: If you're interested in an Asian-Pacific call, then please upvote @sunny-chen1976's comment and we will consider it.

Recording now available: https://ibm.box.com/s/yxyu3elsvbqi4g0lar685hmuc4hnxefp

[seulsale]

Is there a YL event for this?

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Is there a YL event for this?
Yes, there is a YL event set up for IBMers here: https://ec.yourlearning.ibm.com/w3/meeting/10293537

[SunnyChenBJ]

Hi Igor. Good morning. Look forward to the first Guild call. The meeting time at 11 PM in Beijing time is too late for us. Is it possible to have an APAC call? ie 9:00AM - 10:00AM on Thursday Beijing time. It sounds we are 12 hours earlier than you.

Sunny

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Hi @sunny-chen1976, thank you for your interest! If there is enough demand for an APAC call, then we would definitely consider having a second session. If you're interested in an Asian-Pacific call, then please upvote @sunny-chen1976's comment.

[binjia-ibm]

Here are some questions I would like to ask:

I wonder whether a recent version of emacs is interesting to any USS users. Will it require a big effort to port emacs?

Does anyone think a docker machine for USS is helpful? Can it be easily provided?

What is the status of openssl porting? Will it share any services with RACDCERT GENCERT?

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

emacs would certainly be interesting, instructions on how to build it are provided here: https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/INSTALL .

I can't speak for the effort required to port emacs, but I did take a look a vim and it doesn't require many changes to get building on z/OS: https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/vimport. I would hope that emacs is similar :)

[binjia-ibm]

In my normal use, emacs in terminal or console mode is good enough. I assume many users with remote SSH access, like the USS system administrators, don’t need GUI mode either. I hope a simple porting of nw version is easy and quick.

[MikeFultonDev]

... would love to see if others like the idea of emacs...

openssl has a 'basic port' - check out https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/opensslport

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Here's the log of the webex chat:

from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
folks - can you hear us? we plan to start at about 5 minutes after the top of the hour
from Ivan Dovgan (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
Haven't heard anything yet!
from Ivan Dovgan (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
hear ya now!
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
I can hear you
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
I can hear 
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
I can hear you
from Han Wen Zhu (IBM) to Everyone:    11:00  AM
I can hear you 
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:01  AM
i will be monitoring the chat - so if you have any questions please put them here
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:01  AM
we will have some time at the end to go through the questions that we can't just answer here - and of course we will be happy to hear everyone's opinion
from Josh Knight (External) to Everyone:    11:02  AM
On desktop with no camera or microphone ... I am very old school :-)
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:02  AM
as long as you know vi or emacs you should be fine Josh :)
from Josh Knight (External) to Everyone:    11:02  AM
vi bigot speaking :-)
from Josh Knight (External) to Everyone:    11:03  AM
umm, err typing
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:03  AM
this will be recorded as well ... so if someone else is interested that isn't able to attend please point them to our website and they can catch up!
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:09  AM
how did we get these numbers for tools on systems? it's just a simple count of programs available by default when you install the OS in the 'bin' directories...
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:16  AM
Hey all - great to see interest in z/OS support for key open source! Would like to see how this intersects with other community efforts, such as Ambitus in Open Mainframe Project. 
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:16  AM
input on the best, open ways to share material is welcome... our idea is to have a 'one stop shop' at github so you don't have to look everywhere for stuff but of course, this is your community - the key is it be available easily
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:17  AM
With a small community, it's great to see efforts like this come together as it makes sense to get a greater set of contributors and participants
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:17  AM
Additionally, Open Mainframe Project has a supported projects program which could partner here
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:17  AM
Sorry if this is coming off as disruptive - excited to see the interest and would like to see things aligned up for a greater value for all
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:18  AM
good question John. a good topic to discuss at the end i think. Definitely we want to pull together the open source communities well and to work with them
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:19  AM
Thanks! Note there is a similar effort in z/Linux that would be good to get connected as well. 
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:19  AM
For the ones in red (don't build), how did you produce binaries?
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:19  AM
here is the site: https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:19  AM
@sean - the ones in red don't have binaries yet. Work in Progress! 
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:21  AM
and thanks for the question - one important point is that this is not 'done' - the intent is to enable us all to work together to make progress. Some of the ones in yellow are also pretty dubious - some parts work but overall, many test failures still
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:22  AM
the github pages link that Igor is showing: https://zosopentools.github.io/meta/#/
from James Tang (IBM) to Everyone:    11:22  AM
+1 to John's comment on cross-referencing effort by LoZ ecosystem team, since there are similarities and overlaps with Linux-based packages. You probably have this reference already but LoZ team keeps a running list of what they're supporting here - https://www.ibm.com/community/z/open-source-software/
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:23  AM
Thanks James!
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:23  AM
Are you guys assigning someone (or a set of people) to be maintainers of the projects?
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:24  AM
on the technical side: as Igor mentioned, we are building the tools today as ASCII, 64-bit. For some, in particular Perl, we have ensured that 31-bit EBCDIC also works
from Rich Jackson (External) to Everyone:    11:25  AM
So, this group is just focusing on porting OSS tools to z/OS,  and not concerned about making z/OS in general more open
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:25  AM
@frank - for people that want to make changes, it is very similar to other open source approaches where step #1 would be to fork and propose an pull request. Step #2 would be that you get added to the github.com repo so that you can review pull requests and merge them. 
from Anthony Giorgio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:25  AM
Correct.  It's about getting more OSS running on z/OS.
from Rich Jackson (External) to Everyone:    11:26  AM
meh
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:26  AM
@rich - that's a good point - and that's where this ties in to OMP that was mentioned earlier which has other initiatives like Zowe that provide specific z/OS open source specific initiatives
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:27  AM
@rich would be good to hear what you have in mind in the discussion
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:28  AM
Having capabilities here that focus on managing z/OS resources like any other cloud platform, or developing to the platform like any other platform is most important to me.
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:28  AM
@Frank do you mean Ansible for z/OS?
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:29  AM
Ansible would be a great orchestrator but not the only one...
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:29  AM
@frank - just to dig a bit on the 'developing to the platform like any other platform' are you referring to local tools like curl, git, rsync, wget, ... or do you have other things in mind?
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:31  AM
a pointer to docs on the 'pre-req' tools you need to bootstrap are at: https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/meta
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:31  AM
@frank just trying to understand what managing z/OS resources like any other cloud platform means. Ansible, Chef, Terraform? Kubernetes? Docker?
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:32  AM
@Mike definitety need some of those (curl, wget for example) - but over time it seems that developers are less and less focused on some of those lower level tools. I really want to focus on the kind of tooling that allows people to put their code (and related resources) out on z/OS like any other cloud platform.
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:32  AM
the goal is that soon we will be able to just 'eat our own cooking' and use our own curl, git, make, gunzip. We are very close - we just have to get 'git' working :)
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:33  AM
We use the xlclang compiler because it is freely available (unsupported) to people. IBM also does provide a S&S version of the compiler too
from Senthil Nathan (External) to Everyone:    11:33  AM
You started this presentation with "available by default" - does that mean, at some point, these tools will be available by default in USS? 
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:34  AM
It would be really good to resurrect GCC support for z/OS and include that on the list -- at least not leave that completely ignored on the lists.
from Eric Covener (IBM) to Everyone:    11:34  AM
likely to move to clang directly?
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:34  AM
@David - Yes all of them. The key should be that we are creating capabilities that abstract z/OS capabilities that separates the things that require a sysprog from a set of people who want to genericall manage stuff
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:35  AM
@senthil Sorry - I may have mis-spoken. When you get Unix System Services, you won't get these tools by default. But you _can_ download them as described and IBM and other vendors could elect to provide S&S versions of the software. Which is an excellent discussion point 😁 
from Anthony Giorgio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:36  AM
I envision a world where these are available via a simple shell script.
from Ivan Dovgan (IBM) to Everyone:    11:36  AM
@Frank re:"I really want to focus on the kind of tooling that allows people to put their code (and related resources) out on z/OS like any other cloud platform." ----- I believe the core building blocks for making that statement successful, starts with ensuring the utilities that devs are familiar with are available on z/os.
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:37  AM
@eric @david how we move to new compilers over time is good to discuss. xlclang is 'clang-ish'. If there are any C compiler folks that can talk more specifically, that would be great to hear.
from Senthil Nathan (External) to Everyone:    11:37  AM
You did not misspoke. When you compared it against mac and other Linux versions, I was thinking would IBM ship these like the Linux vendors. Apologize if I misunderstood. But now I understand. 
from Eric Covener (IBM) to Everyone:    11:37  AM
Sean Perry had given us (Apache) some guidance when we played with xlclang to wait for clang if we were starting with portable code.
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:37  AM
@anthony lets make that world happen! 
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:39  AM
I have been playing with these ports with clang (aka Open XL v1.1).  The couple I have tried compiled clean when I switched xlclang to ibm-clang64.  You do need to change the -q options to clang style ones.
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:40  AM
one of the nice things that we've hacked through is compiler options and compiler standards. There are lots... Some of the tools configure differently depending on the right compiler. We have a particular level we've chosen that typically works well (I think -std=gnu11) but this can of course be changed
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:40  AM
@david - For some, but I have dealt with some of the developers that are coming out of college. They develop whole applications without ever logging on to a system. If their pipeline is setup correctly they never even ssh into the system.
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:41  AM
the zopen-build is designed to be 'code by exception' so the typical buildenv you need for a port is pretty small. 
from Anthony Giorgio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:41  AM
@Frank - I see that in some of my new hires.
from Eric Covener (IBM) to Everyone:    11:43  AM
can ported libraries be deps in buildenv?
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:43  AM
may be show the options in zopen
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:43  AM
@david - What we need is to make it seem like any other cloud platform only with cool things that you can't get anywhere else... This is not to say we shouldn't port some of those unix tools on the platform, but there are also open source opportunities that don't require someone to write C code. I have been advocating using the existing ZOAU capabilities to create Python building blocks that could be assembled to create automation
from Josh Knight (External) to Everyone:    11:44  AM
Can the chat transcript be made available?
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:44  AM
@eric - yes we do have a few of those already where we pull in libraries for some of these tools (as opposed to just programs)
from John Mertic (External) to Everyone:    11:45  AM
Would love to get this aligned with other efforts - let's connect and discuss how to do this
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:45  AM
@josh - yes
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:45  AM
@john you bet
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:46  AM
we will also put this presentation up to the discussion somewhere after the call
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:47  AM
Testing will be important as well
from Igor Todorovski (IBM) to Everyone:    11:48  AM
https://github.com/search?q=user%3AZOSOpenTools+repo%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FZOSOpenTools+label%3A%22help+wanted%22&type=Issues&ref=advsearch&l=&l=
from Igor Todorovski (IBM) to Everyone:    11:48  AM
https://github.com/ZOSOpenTools/meta/discussions
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:50  AM
I see curl is in red but most ports including ones in green have it as a dependency.  How does that work?
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:52  AM
is it just me or do others hear igor losing packets?
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
@Mike it's you that's breaking up
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
You're the one with network issue, not Igor
from Senthil Nathan (External) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
Mike you are the one who is breaking for me. Igor is fine :) 
from Andrew Smithson (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
Yup
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
yes, the survery is available
from Frank De Gilio (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
Yup cna see
from Senthil Nathan (External) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
yes. we see the survey
from Andrew Smithson (IBM) to Everyone:    11:53  AM
Slido showed up
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:54  AM
better me than igor!
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:54  AM
igor - can you open up so people can talk too?
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:55  AM
unlock the muting
from Senthil Nathan (External) to Everyone:    11:56  AM
we cant unmute ourselves
from Bryant Panyarachun (IBM) to Everyone:    11:56  AM
mute is still locked. 
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:56  AM
It's a webinar and we cannot unmute ourselves
from David Edelsohn (IBM) to Everyone:    11:57  AM
So when is Zoom going to be ported to z/OS?
from Sean Perry (IBM) to Everyone:    11:57  AM
+1 for vim
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:59  AM
@muiez we still need to fill it out more but our docs have a section on 'common issues'. For the most part, first and foremost, it's ASCII and UTF8 vs EBCDIC
from Mike Fulton (IBM) to Everyone:    11:59  AM
but there are others and we need to continue fleshing that out

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Survey and powerpoint slides added. Recording should be available soon.

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

Recording now available: https://ibm.box.com/s/yxyu3elsvbqi4g0lar685hmuc4hnxefp

[MikeFultonDev]

@IgorTodorovskiIBM can you add the recording to 'the top' when you get a chance?