Bring modern ALM to your IBM i Projects

Project4i is a companion to the Code for IBM i extension: it never talks to your system directly, it builds on the connection you already trust. You need VS Code or IBM BOB, the Code for IBM i extension, and an active IBM i connection.

1. Install Project4i from the VS Code Marketplace or the Open VSX Registry.
2. Connect to your IBM i system through Code for IBM i.
3. Open the IBM Project4i view in the Activity Bar.
4. On a fresh system, run the Setup Wizard to bootstrap your IFS root, environments, and promotion pipeline. If your organization is already configured, you simply join it.

A Home / Welcome view guides your first steps and links to the main actions.

A project group is a logical bundle of source members drawn from any library — you are no longer tied to physical library boundaries. You can mix native QSYS source members and IFS stream files in the same project.

• Create a project from the Projects view (the + action).
• Add a member by right-clicking it in the Object Browser → Add to Project; a physical checkout copy is placed in the project's dev library.
• Collaborative lock — lock a member while you edit it. A lock icon shows who holds it; release your own lock, and project owners can force-unlock.
• Conflicts — a member added to more than one project is flagged In Conflict, which blocks promotion until you resolve it.
• Missing / orphaned members — a health check flags members that no longer exist on IBM i so you can remove them individually or in bulk.

Each project defines its own promotion pipeline — an ordered chain of environments such as DEV → TEST → PROD (the built-in seed is a 7-tier chain you can rename, reorder, add to, or trim).

• Every environment maps to a set of libraries: a source and object library (required), plus optional data, config, backup, journal libraries and an IFS path.
• Libraries are exposed to your compile templates as generic, type-based variables (for example &DEV_SRC_LIB, &PROD_OBJ_LIB), so one template works across every project.
• The environment definition also drives the JOBD library list used when commands run natively on IBM i.

Promote moves a member from one environment to the next, compiling it with the right command for its source type. Every promote takes an automatic pre-promote backup so you can roll back safely.

• Compile Map — customizable CL templates per source type (RPGLE, CLLE, DDS, SQL…) with variable substitution; prefix a template with ? to open a visual prompt for its parameters.
• Data-safe promote — when a target object already exists, CRTPF becomes CHGPF (data migrated by field name) and an existing SQL table is preserved, so production data is never lost.
• Rollback — restore a member's pre-promote backup after a promote. When no backup exists, Project4i offers a confirmed cleanup instead.
• Blocked cases — for data safety, rollback of physical/logical data files (PF/LF) is intentionally skipped.
• Approval — promotion can require maker-checker sign-off: request approval, then a different user approves or rejects before deploy.

A deployment package bundles several members into one named release that you deploy together as a single governed operation. Each project has an always-visible Deployment Packages folder.

• Create a package with a name, optional release notes, and an optional shared ticket ID; members are shown in build-dependency order.
• Deploy promotes the members in build tiers (files → display/print → programs → CL → service programs) and stops on the first failure.
• Promote All deploys the entire project sequentially, with Run / Skip / Run All / Cancel controls and auto-skipped conflicts.
• Rollback restores every member's pre-deploy backup in reverse build order.

Project4i can promote across multiple IBM i systems, not just the one you are connected to. A server catalog holds the connection details of your remote systems.

• Assign a remote server to a target environment to promote there over SSH / PASE, including the pre-promote backup and rollback.
• Source transfer between systems — when enabled, the source member is copied to the remote system before it is compiled there.
• Server passwords are stored encrypted and never kept in project files, on the IFS, or in logs.

Shared projects store their metadata and audit trail as files on the IBM i IFS, so a whole team can collaborate in real time. Set the IFS root once, then create or join shared projects and sync them at any time.

• Roles & permissions — Owner, Contributor, and Viewer, with granular per-contributor permissions (add, promote, run action, document, and more).
• Approval workflow — an optional maker-checker gate; the requester cannot approve their own change.
• Global catalog — for enterprise setups, an organization centrally publishes default environments, servers, workflow commands, variables, and the source inventory, pulled automatically when you connect.

Understand the blast radius of a change before you release it. Project4i scans the relationships between your IBM i objects — programs, files, service programs, modules, logical→physical files, data areas, data queues, message files, triggers, and binding directories — into an interactive graph.

• Scan in the foreground with a live monitor, or as a background batch job on the server that you can detach from and re-attach to later.
• Impact Analysis 360 answers two mirror questions about any object: Used by (who depends on me) and Uses (what I depend on), at the first level or transitively with a configurable depth.
• Navigate with an object finder, drill down through a breadcrumb trail, and switch to a Diagram view of the same sub-graph.
• Open source opens the related member read-only, and while editing a source you can Ctrl/Cmd+click a referenced program, file, or table to jump to its source.

Inventories tell Project4i where your source and objects live, and the search tools help you find members fast across libraries.

• Source Inventory — an org-wide catalog of source containers (library/file) with descriptions, shared with the team and used by templates, AI, and the impact-analysis perimeter picker.
• Object Inventory — the object libraries that define the scope of a dependency scan.
• Member Search — search by name, type, description, changed-after date, and even inside the source content, from a sidebar view or a full panel.
• Source Collections — save a search as a reusable, named collection and re-run it later.

Project4i includes an optional AI suite that helps you document and analyze your code. AI features are entirely optional and run through a pluggable backend.

• AI documentation — generate technical and functional documentation from your source members, previewed in VS Code and openable in Word.
• Change-impact analysis — describe an intended change and let the AI judge which members are affected, with confidence and reasoning.
• Bring Your Own LLM — run the AI on VS Code models (GitHub Copilot) by default, or point it at any external OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Your API key is stored securely and never written to project files, the IFS, or logs.

Day-to-day helpers keep the whole team aligned and let you tailor Project4i to your standards.

• Activity Log — a filterable, team-synced audit trail of every action (create, promote, package, approval, rename, error).
• Kanban board — a Dev → Promoted → In Test lifecycle board with automatic state transitions on promote.
• Workflow commands — customizable CL templates for promote, checkout, release, and IFS promote, seeded from your global defaults.
• Run Action — run a reusable custom CL command on any member straight from its context menu.

Everything lives inside VS Code and IBM BOB, styled with the Deep Space design.

• Projects TreeView — a sidebar that shows your projects, members, deployment packages, and documentation, grouped for a clear overview.
• Control Panel — a two-column settings panel for global defaults (developer info, environments, workflow commands, variables, inventories, AI backend).
• Project Properties — a per-project panel for environments, promote configuration, custom variables, and permissions.
• Full Dark / Light theming with custom icons and color-coded nodes.