Providing z/OS Tools and Toys in zopen

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

As @AnthonyGiorgio pointed out, there are number open source tools under https://github.com/IBM/IBM-Z-zOS/tree/main/zOS-Tools-and-Toys .

Should we bundle these into one package or provide them as individual packages?

Some packages collide with GNU tools like which, where, and stat. Which tools in z/OS Tools and Toys should be expose first? Are there any particular ones that are really useful?

[lbdyck]

The goal is to provide the community with access to tools (and toys) that will make them productive using z/OS - thus I'm in favor of any/all packages.

[AnthonyGiorgio]

How should we manage the tools from a zopen perspective? If they are all in one bucket, what should happen when I update a tool, or add a new one? I just added users.rexx, and I have an update planned for sparse. Would a change to one tool trigger a new package version?

[IgorTodorovskiIBM]

It would trigger a new release. The package version update would be up to the maintainer of the bundle.

How often are they updated?

If we bundle them, it would be similar to coreutils or moreutils. Those projects though are much more stable.

We could also bundle them based on category (file I/O, system tools, networking, etc).