Guest: Anthony Anter (LinkedIn)
Company: BMC Software (LinkedIn, Twitter)

Git is the predominant source code management system on the distributed side of development. In this episode of TFiR Mainframe Matters recorded at the Open Mainframe Summit in Philadelphia, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Anthony Anter, DevOps Evangelist and Technologist at BMC Software, to discuss how mainframe developers can leverage Git.

Key highlights from this video interview:

• Git became part of the mainframe application development conversation when the mainframe community started adopting DevOps and DevOps principles. Anter describes the role Git plays in mainframe: a source code manager that enables greater parallel development.
• BMC created its ISPW solution to interface with Git. It took the best-in-breed for source code management and then paired it with the best-in-breed for doing builds and deployments on the mainframe to create superior developer experience.
• The techniques and standards that people are using today for Git development can be reused in the future for COBOL. Anter explains how it is possible to decouple the platform and language from the source code to enable developers to put anything into Git.
• BMC has taken a hybrid approach to Git, which basically allows an application to make the decision. Application A can be on the mainframe and practice traditional mainframe development, but Application B may be a little bit more mature in its DevOps so they’re going to use Git. Both of these applications can exist in the same environment.
• Not every application is suitable for Git. Those being deployed daily or weekly would be a good fit for Git.
• Anter believes it is still the early days for Git within the mainframe ecosystem although there is a lot of discussion around the topic and good solutions. He predicts that we will see a major uptick in adoption in the next three years.
• Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe and modern IDEs such as BMC’s Topaz Workbench are essential to attracting the next generation of developers. Engineering students are already using GitHub as a source code management system so it will help provide the same look and feel for developers.

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.