Working offline

The i Projects perspective allows for offline, disconnected development. A live connection is required only when code updates or builds are needed. If you are working on a remote laptop, or are at home with a slower connection, you might choose to work offline.

About this task

Attention: If you share projects with a team, be careful to ensure that proper authorities are issued so that unauthorized users are not accidentally given access to source.
To begin working offline:

Procedure

  1. In the Remote Systems view, expand your connection and right-click the IBM i resource that you want to work with offline.
    • Select Make Available Offline. If an i Project does not exist for the library and connection that contains the IBM i resources, a new i Project is automatically created. By default, the project name is IBMiConnection_LibraryName, where IBMiConnection is the name of your IBM® i connection and LibraryName is the name of the library. Since the project has been created using the library and connection values, the next time that the code is pushed to the server from the project, it will be pushed to the original library that it came from. If one or more i Projects are found, you will be asked to use an existing project or create a new one.
    • Select Add to i Project. This allows you to download IBM i resources into an existing i Project. If you select this option, you must select from a list of i Projects that you have already created. To get started with i Projects, see Opening the i Projects perspective. If you happen to download objects from a library that does not match the associated library for the project, and push your changes to the server, the objects will not go to the library that they came from. Instead, they will go to the associated library.
  2. To see the i Project, select Window > Open Perspective > Other. In the Select Perspective list, select i Projects.
  3. Right-click on the project and select Show Remote Objects.
  4. Right-click on an IBM i resource and select Add To Project from the pop-up menu. This action will add the source file to your offline i Project.

What to do next

Putting your connection into offline mode

You can also put an entire i connection, and all the contents defined with that connection, info offline mode. This method of working offline prevents the Remote System Explorer from attempting to connect to the i server if a request is made for remote information. For example, if you are verifying a local source file or member in an i Project, the project would attempt to connect to the server if the required information was not available in the cache. This can be prevented by switching the connection to offline mode. There are two ways to do this:
  • Right-click your i connection and select Work Offline.
  • Right-click the i connection and select Properties. Then select the Work Offline check box in the properties dialog box.

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