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Copying content to z/OS will never be the same, IBM z/OS core 1.4.1 has released !!!

By Demetri Dimatos posted Thu April 20, 2023 08:07 PM

  

Ansible z/OS Core 1.4.1 has released to Automation Hub,  Galaxy and is available in GitHub. This release is an update to Ansible z/OS Core 1.4.0 that released 4 months ago that delivers a number of updates for the zos_copy module. This comes with optional support and service for Automation Hub users and community support for Galaxy users. 

If you recall, in version 1.4.0 the zos_copy module architecture was updated, and this momentum continues with these enhancements to the zos_copy module:

  • when copying a load module from a PDS/E to another PDS/E, now the module automatically detects if the destination contains load modules to correctly copy the executable.
  • when the source is a not an IBM-1047 encoded UNIX file or the source contains new line characters, the module can now compute the record length.
  • when copying a source with new line characters, it would cause an error, now all source files are analyzed and run through a normalization algorithm.  
  • when copying data, to ensure data integrity, a temporary backup was being created even when the force option was selected. The module no longer performs any temporary backups when force is present under the pretense that if force is chosen, it is a clear distinction that the target does not need to be preserved.
  • when copying content and using the mode option, if the destination included a directory, the mode (permissions) would also be applied to the directory. Now the destination is not altered by the mode.
Semantic Versioning

You might be wondering what the versioning scheme is by this point, so let us take a moment and discuss that briefly. We manage our software with a system referred to as "Semantic Versioning" where under this scheme the versions convey meaning and establish a relationship between releases. In version 1.4.1 that follows `MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH` such that:
 
  • A MAJOR version is when there are incompatible interface changes.
  • A MINOR version is when substantial new functionality or improvements are introduced.
  • A PATCH version is when compatible bug fixes are introduced.
 
Dependencies

Now that we covered the versioning scheme, lets discuss the collections prerequisites for version 1.4.1. The reason for explaining our versioning scheme is because this MAJOR.MINOR version of 1.4 will be the last to support IBM Z Open Automation Utilities  (ZOAU) version 1.1.1. In our upcoming releases, the minimum will be ZOAU version 1.2.2, thus this release provides our users time to prepare for migration to ZOAU 1.2.2 or later. The next important note is that the requirement for IBM Enterprise Python is now version 3.9.x, this because IBM Enterprise Python 3.8 reached end of service on September 30th, 2022.

About the Author
Demetrios Dimatos is the IBM z/OS Ansible Core Senior Technical Lead with 16 years mainframe experience and over 20 years of development experience; having led multiple products ranging from client server technologies, administration consoles, IBM Open Platform (Hadoop - HDFS, MapReduce, Yarn) and Spark, Linux and Solaris kernel development. 

Resources

IBM Ansible z/OS core on Galaxy
IBM Ansible Core Collection Repository on GitHub
IBM Ansible Core Collection on Automation Hub
Red Hat® Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z documentation

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