Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390

There are many situations that require changes to be made in parallel, including an emergency fix, concurrent development or maintenance, multiple release development or maintenance, and customization of vendor application code, but you need a common process for managing the consolidation of those changes.

IBM Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 can help you manage the parallel development process.

Identify components
Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 allows you to match up base file members with other members having the same name from one or two other files. Based on the match up of the members, components that require merging are easily identified.

Analyze complexity
Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 allows you to build a preliminary work file to obtain member statistics, including the number of conflicts found. These statistics give you a better understanding of how many conflicts there are and the resources required for the merge process.

Merge and review changes
The merge process generates a marked-up work file that shows inserts, deletions, and overlap/conflict areas.

Address merge conflicts
You can edit the work file from within Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 and resolve conflicts before generating your final merge file.

Create merged source
After conflicts have been addressed, you can generate the merge file. Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 reads the work file as input and performs the insertions and deletions indicated in the file to generate the merge file output.

The merge file contains the merged source code, which you can store in your software configuration management (SCM) tool or use as input to a compile.

Test merged output
The final step is to compile and link the merged source code and test the changes.

Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 provides the tools required by both project managers and application developers to manage the process of parallel development:

• ISPF workbench. A simple to use ISPF interface provides access to the Merge Tool actions and reports.

• Merge Tool action. A variety of actions are available to perform merge tasks. You can determine the degree of merge action based on the complexity of the changes.

• Reports. Merge Tool for z/OS and OS/390 provides reports to aid in the assessment of source consolidation. The statistics file is particularly useful in identifying and sizing a consolidation effort.

• Work file. The work file or marked-up file is produced by the merge process. Application developers can edit this file to review changes and to resolve any merge conflicts before generating the final merge result.

• Batch utility. A batch utility is available to perform most Merge Tool actions in batch.