zTron - Command Pipeline Automation for z/OS

Minor change ...

zTron is a lightweight automation and logging mechanism for z/OS that processes pipelines of tasks using common interfaces that require minimum installation and configuration. These tasks can specify the use of traditional z/OS interfaces like TSO, ISPF, and JCL, as well as open source interfaces based on Unix and Linux. The goal is to make the framework familiar to Linux and z/OS users alike.

How To Build

• Create a dev/test virtual environment with:

  • build
  • wheel
  • pytest
  • pyyaml

  These can come from pypi.

  python3 -m venv devenv
  source devenv/bin/activate
  pip install -i https://pypi.python.org/simple build wheel pytest pyyaml
  

• Perform the build from devenv

  pip wheel -i https://pypi.python.org/simple --wheel-dir=dist .
  

How to Test

pytest 2>&1 | tee test_log.txt

Minimal Footprint

zTron is implemented in Python and shell script, and passes tasks to different z/OS facilities through the ISPF Gateway. There are no other dependencies to install or configure. For systems that have Jupyter notebooks installed, zTron also offers a web-based interface.

Common User Setup

zTron requires Python 3.6 or later, and a Unix or Linux shell. The standard Unix System Services (USS) shell (/bin/sh) works well, as does the Bash shell if that is available. Bash and Python can be installed through one of several different offerings available on z/OS.

The ISPF gateway uses an interface called the Common Event Adapter to run TSO commands and ISPF functions from USS. There is some environmental setup required on the part of the user before zTron can be deployed. See the common setup instructions for more details.

zTron's CLI and Jupyter Notebook Interfaces

zTron has both a CLI and an optional web-based interface implemented using Jupyter notebooks.

The zTron command looks like this:

[sh] /u/bostian> ztron --help

ztron - Execute a pipeline of commands to implement a workflow
usage: ztron -p <pipeline> -c <config> -l <logpath> -v <verbosity> -h
  -p | --pipeline: path to the command pipeline
  -c | --config: path to the configuration
  -l | --log_lvl: logging level (info|warn|err|trace)
  -h | --help: show help

If you have Jupyter available in your installation, you have the option of using the Jupyter notebook interface to zTron

Important links

• Python modules and imports
  • https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/modules.html#packages