To use a 5250 green screen terminal in Visual Studio Code (VS Code) for IBM i, follow these steps:
- Install Code for IBM i:
- First, make sure you have Code for IBM i installed in your VS Code. If not, you can find installation instructions here.
- Open the Terminal:
- In VS Code, click the Terminals button at the bottom of your screen.
- A quick-pick menu will appear at the top of your screen. Choose the 5250 (SSH) terminal option.
- Since you’ve already connected to your system using Code for IBM i, the PASE terminal will log you in automatically.
- 5250 Terminal Requirements:
- To launch a 5250 emulator, you need to have tn5250 installed. This is a terminal client for IBM i that emulates 5250 terminals.
- You can install tn5250 via yum or via IBM i ACS (as shown in the video below).
- Customize Your Terminal:
- Code for IBM i provides additional settings to configure your terminal. One common setting is the CCSID mapping configuration, which lets you set the encoding for the terminal.
By having both your code and 5250 terminals within the same IDE, you’ll find it more efficient for RPG and open-source development.
Upgrade from SEU to a Programming IDE
Modern IBM i professionals swear by the graphical IDE, particularly compared to older greenscreen coding environments like PDM and SEU. In this course we will cover all the main elements of using a modern Interactive Development Environment (IBM BOB / VSCODE) to write code in both RPGLE, CL, PF, LF , SQL, DSPF and PRTF and more.
