Rocket Software Announces Git Version Control Tools for IBM z/OS

Waltham, MA, Feb. 1, 2017 -- Rocket Software today announced the general availability of Git for IBM z/OS. Git for z/OS is part of Rocket's Open Source Languages and Tools portfolio, which includes more than 30 ported versions of popular development tools and programming languages modified to operate on IBM z13 and z13s mainframes. These languages and tools help democratize the development process, allowing developers to take advantage of mainframe programs and applications without the need to know COBOL or assembly language.

"Mainframes are the most powerful computers in use today, and thousands of organizations rely on them to drive their business success," says Rocket CTO Bryan Smith. "Git for z/OS maximizes the value of mainframes by letting users work together to push the boundaries of their systems with none of the version-control issues that can arise when multiple engineers work on the same code at the same time. It's part of our effort to make the mainframe as useful and easy to use as possible."

First introduced in 2005 by Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Git is the world's most widely-used version control system (VCS), helping development teams keep track of changes to source code and facilitating group collaboration. The z/OS port of Git supports automatic tagging and conversion of text files between ISO8859-1 (ASCII) and IBM-1047 (EBCDIC) character encodings.

Rosalind Radcliffe, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect for DevOps for z Systems at IBM, said, "Access to Git for z/OS with improved version control at no cost is just one facet of the work Rocket does with IBM to make the mainframe accessible across industries. Git is a critical component for many companies' DevOps transformation, and now we have it for traditional z/OS applications as well. We have been working with Rocket on the implementation that integrates with IBM's strategic products to keep users up-to-date and to maximize their productivity."

About Rocket Software
Rocket Software (www.rocketsoftware.com) is a technology company that helps organizations in the IBM ecosystem build solutions that meet today's needs while extending the value of their technology investments for the future. Thousands of companies depend on Rocket to solve their most challenging business problems by helping them run their existing infrastructure and data, as well as extend those assets to take advantage of cloud, mobile, analytics, and other future innovations. Founded in 1990, Rocket is based in Waltham, Massachusetts with locations in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

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