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Here's where I expose my ignorance. I understand git and I have a basic
conceptual understanding of DevOps and CI/CD, but within the shops I have
worked in the past several years (all small dev staffs not counting my
current employer), no one sees the value. When I was at PTC as a support
engineer for Implementer, I think there were two customers asking whether
we had any plans for Implementer to support git. (Perhaps anyone looking
at Merlin wouldn't be concerned about Implementer going forward?)
Ideally, the complexity is limited to a one-time setup, but if purchasing
and licensing RDi is any indication of how unnecessarily complex IBM has to
make things, I'm not sure most shops would be persuaded.
That is my cynical 2¢.
- Dan Bale
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
Vern Hamberg via MIDRANGE-L
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 4:52 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Merlin
Hi Dan
Merlin is intended, as I recall, to integrate various comtemporary
development techniques into one package - DevOps, CI/CD, git, etc., with
the plumbing needed for all that. I suppose the idea is to give customers a
structure that means they don't have to figure out what to use of the
several options in the world today. This would seem to require a broader
knowledge base, and it does include more than just VS Code for i extension,
an obvious statement, I suppose.
With all that does come some complexity behind the covers, granted. But
with the intent that an end developer doesn't need concern himself or
herself with those details. As stated in the overview on the Merlin page,
"Merlin is capable of replacing all aspects of your existing source control
management, developer IDE, and application build capabilities with a fully
integrated modern approach..." - but then we will have to be willing to
actually replace the tools that provide those capabilities.
*Regards*
*Vern Hamberg*
IBM Champion 2025 <cid:part1.JL8GkVfS.nvYUnuSO@centurylink.net> CAAC
(COMMON Americas Advisory Council) IBM Influencer 2023
On 3/24/2025 1:10 PM, Dan Bale wrote:
Last I looked, there was a high cost to entry with Merlin, both in termsof dollars and specific technical expertise. Given that a lot of
developers are still refusing to give up SEU, I honestly don't see a lot of
shops making that investment.
upgrade to 9.8 had a devil of a time with applying the permanent license.
We have RDi licenses here, but just last week a developer trying to
RDi kept returning extremely vague error messages and it wasn't until I
discovered that the user's install somehow managed to have a floating
license instead of the permanent license, even though our instructions for
users to install RDi 9.8 are crystal clear and the user in this case is not
one for PEBKAC errors. After several days before we finally determined the
issue and had to get IBM to tell us how to delete the floating license, he
was ready to jump ship to VS Code for i.
primarily use RDi due to my several years of experience with it, but I am
I've got both RDi and VS Code for i installed on my work laptop. I
learning to use VS Code for i on my personal laptop for when I work on
PUB400. Does anyone who has used both have a good reason to recommend RDi
over VS Code for i?
- Dan Bale
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