Quick Start to zopen community

zopen community provides a package manager for installation of unsupported Open Source tools that run native on your z/OS system.

zopen community also provides an easy to use tool for building these same tools from source code on your z/OS system.

Whether you want to use the tools or also improve the tools is up to you.

If you have installed a version of the zopen package manager prior to September 2023, please note you will need to migrate to the new package manager.

Installing zopen package manager

Before installing, ensure auto-conversion is enabled by checking the environment variables _BPXK_AUTOCVT and _CEE_RUNOPTS. If they are not set, run:

export _BPXK_AUTOCVT="ON"
export _CEE_RUNOPTS="FILETAG(AUTOCVT,AUTOTAG)"

---

Quick Install (if curl, bash, and jq are available)

Run the following one-liner:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zopencommunity/meta/HEAD/tools/zopen_install.sh)"

---

Manual Installation

If curl or bash are not available, follow these steps:

1. Download the latest meta package
   Download the latest meta pax file to your desktop, then upload it to z/OS.

   Note: Use sftp to transfer the file from a non-z/OS machine to z/OS to avoid ASCII/EBCDIC conversion issues.

2. Extract the pax file on z/OS

   pax -rf meta-<version>.pax.Z

3. Navigate to the uncompressed directory

   cd meta-<version>

4. Set up the PATH for the zopen tool

   . ./.env

5. Initialize the zOpen environment

   zopen init

6. Configure your zOpen environment

   . $ZOPEN_ROOTFS/etc/zopen-config

   Replace $ZOPEN_ROOTFS with the path to your zOpen file system.

7. Install desired tools

   zopen install <tool>

8. Cleanup
   After installation, you can safely remove the downloaded pax file and the extracted directory:

   rm -f meta-<version>.pax.Z
   rm -rf meta-<version>

• Note: We recommend that you add the line . $ZOPEN_ROOTFS/etc/zopen-config to your .profile startup script. Alternatively, you can use zopen init --append-to-profile when setting up your zopen file-system.

See The package manager and Developing Tools for more details.

Getting Started Video

If you like learning through watching, check out our getting started video:

Upgrading zopen community

zopen community can be upgraded like so:

$ zopen upgrade

In this case, all packages including the package manager, zopen (via the meta package manager) will be updated sequentially while being prompted to perform the update. Using the option -y will automatically accept all prompts as shown here:

$ zopen upgrade -y

Upgrading a single package

Individual packages can be upgraded by specifiying the package name. For example upgrading just the package manager is accomplished like so:

$ zopen upgrade meta -y
$ zopen init --re-init
# This assumes zopen is installed in your $HOME directory
$ . ~/zopen/etc/zopen-config

Note, for users of meta 0.6.x and earlier, if the upgrade fails because of a pinned message, find the .pinned file and remove it. Afterwards zopen upgrade meta -y will work.

For example:

$ cd ~/zopen
$ find . -name ".pinned"
./meta-0.6.2/.pinned
./usr/local/zopen/meta/meta-dt/.pinned
$ rm ./usr/local/zopen/meta/meta-dt/.pinned
# This is a version installed as part of the install process and
# can be safely removed once installed.
$ rm -rf ./meta-0.6.2/.pinned