Zowe Explorer incorrectly thinks dataset members have been changed on the mainframe between opening in VSCode and saving in VSCode.

[skurtz97]

Describe the bug

Receiving the message "There is a newer version of this file on the mainframe. Compare with remote contents or overwrite?" in a pop-up at the bottom right of vscode.

The available responses to the pop-up are to either compare or overwrite. Overwriting works as expected and will save the open file to the remote.

However, this was not the behavior until very recently, sometime after the 3.0 release I believe. We have tried:

1. Uninstalling and reinstalling VSCode
2. Clearing out all vscode settings
3. Removing all extra extensions
4. Editing remotely plain text dataset members with no language mode set (at first, we assumed there must be some kind of whitespace or line ending problem of some kind caused by language extensions).
5. Changing settings like files.saveConflictResolution to overwrite on save see if it would help.

To Reproduce

1. Install Visual Studio Code (User) x64 on Windows 11.
2. Install Zowe Explorer and configure a standard team config.
3. Connect to your remote.
4. Find and open a dataset member to edit.
5. Make a change.
6. Ctrl +S to save that change.
7. If it works the first time, try again. Sometimes it works the first time for some reason. By the second change and save...it consistently seems to think there has been a change on the remote despite it not being opened in any other editor, and despite the "compare" option not showing any changes including no whitespace changes, which vscode comparison should highlight if present.

Expected behavior

These datasets are not opened on the remote and the comparison does not show any actual changes. I would expect a Ctrl + S to save the file to the remote without asking for manual confirmation of an overwrite.

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 11
• Zowe Explorer Version: 3.0.2
• (Optional) Zowe CLI Version: 8.1.1
• (Optional) Are you using Secure Credential Store? No, but I've tested this with a coworker that IS using SCS and they had the same problem. Doesn't seem to be related to SCS.

Additional context
This started at some point after upgrade to 3.0, but I vaguely remember it working after the upgrade and don't think it started exactly with the 3.0.0 update.

Usually, we use Broadcom extensions, but for testing to verify this is a Zowe explorer problem, all extensions were uninstalled and language modes turned off.

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[traeok]

Hi @skurtz97,

Thanks for filing the bug report - I have a couple questions to help track down the source of the issue:

• Are you using z/OSMF or z/FTP profiles when this error occurs, or does this occur with an extender profile type?
• Does your team use 8-digit mainframe user IDs? IBM released a fix for an issue that caused a 412 error when saving data sets for 8-digit mainframe IDs. Here's the link to the APAR for reference: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/apar/PH52243

[skurtz97]

Hi @skurtz97,

Thanks for filing the bug report - I have a couple questions to help track down the source of the issue:

• Are you using z/OSMF or z/FTP profiles when this error occurs, or does this occur with an extender profile type?
• Does your team use 8-digit mainframe user IDs? IBM released a fix for an issue that caused a 412 error when saving data sets for 8-digit mainframe IDs. Here's the link to the APAR for reference: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/apar/PH52243

1. We are using z/OSMF profiles and I have not tested or reproduced this error using the FTP profiles. I will give the FTP profiles a shot later and report back.

2. These RACF IDs we've tested with were both 8 characters. I believe I have access to some IDs that are less than 8 characters or can create one and so I will give that a shot and report back.

Thanks for the heads up about the APAR! I will take a look and hopefully I can close out this issue relatively quickly if that ends up being the fix.

[skurtz97]

Hi @traeok

Just a partial update. Hopefully will have the full one through later tonight.

• I switched to using the Zowe zftp profile (still with the 8 characters username) and had the same issue.

Trying the 7 character username in a sec...

[skurtz97]

• I've now tried with 7 character RACF IDs and it is still giving the same error.

I'm not sure what else to try since I believe that APAR sounds like it was z/OSMF specific for errors caused by using 8 characters user IDs...and this error appears to still be happening with a 7 character ID.

Is there any reason to believe the APAR would help?

[skurtz97]

Thank you for the quick update!

I'll get my extensions updated when this goes through and report back.