Can Jenkins slave be installed on Mainframe? Over the years, I’ve built a DevOps solution with IBM ClearCase (has a z/OS extension) , ClearQuest and BuildForge (has an agent on z/OS) which supports Mainframe, Informatica, Unix and Windows. Now I am thinking about migrating it to the modern tool such as Jenkins to replace BF, JIRA to replace CQ and Git to replace CC. I am not sure if I can do that with the z/OS piece, need a way to submit job to mainframe and get back the result.
You certainly can. You need z/OSMF active on z/OS, might already be as it is part of z/OS. You need z/OSMF Jobs Rest activated and to make it really easy install zowe cli where jenkins runs and go. Have a look at https://zowe.org and it is shown howto at
https://medium.com/zowe/continuous-integration-for-a-mainframe-app-800657e84e96
If your ‘client’ is running on z/OS, the ftp client supports using ‘TYPE J’ where PUT sends a job to the job entry system (JES2, not sure if it works on JES3) and GET is used to retrieve job results. I would consult manuals for details. I am not sure if this requires enablement by systems programmers like the REST interface does, and I’m not discounting Zowe as a solution, just mentioning this alternative.