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benova — Development Environment Setup

benova is a one-command tool that sets up your entire Ingenium development environment on Windows. It reads configuration files, sets all required environment variables, and launches your preferred development tool.

Commands​

Open VS Code​

benova dev [--env <ENV>]

Opens VS Code with all Ingenium environment variables pre-configured. This is the recommended way to start your development session.

Example:

# Open VS Code with the default environment
benova dev

# Open VS Code with a specific environment
benova dev --env ST

Open Command Prompt​

benova cli [--env <ENV>]

Opens an interactive command prompt with the full Ingenium environment. Useful when you need to run CLI tools directly.

Example:

# Open a terminal with default environment
benova cli

# Open a terminal with staging environment
benova cli --env ST

Export Environment Variables​

benova env [--env <ENV>] [--output <FILE>]

Exports all environment variables as SET commands. Useful for creating custom startup scripts.

Example:

# Print environment variables to screen
benova env

# Save to a .cmd file
benova env --output setup.cmd

Configuration Files​

benova reads from two configuration files located in ~/.nova/cfg/:

nova.toml​

Contains the core Nova configuration:

[local]
nova_home = "C:\\Users\\yourname\\.nova"
nova_apps = "C:\\nova-apps"

[db2]
instance = "DB2INST"
path = "C:\\Program Files\\IBM\\SQLLIB"

[iman]
start_port = 3000

ing.toml​

Contains Ingenium compiler settings:

[ing]
cobdir = "C:\\Program Files\\Micro Focus\\Visual COBOL"
directives = "DIALECT(MF) COPYEXT(cpy,cbl)"

What Happens Behind the Scenes​

When you run benova dev or benova cli, the tool:

  1. Reads nova.toml and ing.toml from ~/.nova/cfg/
  2. Loads additional environment files from ~/.nova/ingenium/
  3. Sets up environment variables (NOVA_HOME, DB2INSTANCE, DB2PATH, COBDIR, etc.)
  4. Constructs and deduplicates the PATH variable
  5. Launches VS Code or the command prompt
tip

You only need to configure these files once. After that, a single benova dev command gives you a fully configured workspace every time.