Fixed RPG to RPG Free conversion (Power-Coffee nr. 31 by Marco Riva)

Many of you probably know the Power-Coffee … of our blogger and IBM Champion Marco Riva … a weekly appointment with absolutely interesting technical pills from the IBM i world.

In the episode of November 15, 2021, Power Coffee number 31, Marco presents us some free tools for the RPG conversion from Fixed to Free, coming to recommend a real conversion flow to obtain a better result.

Anyone using Rational Rdi will have already used the product’s native Fixed-Free conversion option … which does a decent job with the program’s “C” specs and sadly, nothing with the HFD and O specs. In Power Coffee we see instead with Marco:

• The utilities JCRMDS by Craig Rutledge , which allow to convert step by step different parts of our sources, including HFD specifications, * ENTRY Plist, Klist and c
• CVTRPGFREE by Paul de Valmency , which in just one step already does an excellent job.

Excellent guide and excellent advice for converting RPG Fixed programs, perhaps even starting from RPG / 400 sources.

RPGFREEWEB By Liam Allan

I add to the list of tools recommended by Marco Riva, also this excellent service, based on the homonymous project GitHub RPGFREEWEB by Liam Allan (thanks for existing Liam!) … a Web App where you can copy and paste the Fixed source to recover the Free one:

http://rpgfreeweb.herokuapp.com/

Personally I use this Liam tool … I find it very convenient to open the source in Rational Rdi, ctr-a copy everything …. ctrl-v paste it into RGPFREEWEB and then do the reverse with the converted code (and maybe work on it a bit from Rdi).

This project is also Open Source and we can help improve the conversion or handling of particular cases that we find in our sources … creating value also for those who will use it in the future:

https://github.com/worksofbarry/rpgfreeweb.git