Re: RPG III - Object to Source DE-Compiler

Steve,

>The answer has to come from IBM. OS400 should retain the full source code
>used to create an object.  Store it within the object itself

Use *LIST or *ALL debug views with ILE and it will retain the  source code in
the program object.  But it naturally retains the source code after applying
compiler directives like /If and /copy.  In other words, you have the exact
source needed to recreate the program, but not necessarily the original source
member equivalent.

> and provide a retrieve command to get it when it is needed.

IBM provides debugger APIs which can be used to retreive it.  A magazine
utililty from years ago published code to extract the source and put it in a
member.

>With all the dasd available
>today, this would have no impact on system performance.

The debug data is stored in separate pages which never get read from disk unless
you are in debug mode, so in fact there already is no hit on memory pool sizes.
Only on the disk space used.

So they already offer this.  If you opt to use it.

Obviously, vendors don't *want* to ship the license checking and other highly
sensitive modules with full source code included, or even basic observability.

Doug