To use GitHub Copilot, you do not need to use the rest of the GitHub suite of tools. You can use it in a supported editor of your choosing against any file, no matter where it is stored. If you already use source control systems such as GitLab, Azure DevOps, or Bitbucket, you can still use GitHub Copilot. GitHub is the vendor of the product, but using GitHub itself is not a requirement.

Of course, there is extra functionality available if you use GitHub, which will be explained in depth in Chapter 6. The only integration to be able to use GitHub Copilot is having a GitHub account that you can use to log in and then tie your GitHub Copilot license to it. This tool is even available as a free tier (with some limitations), making it available for all GitHub users. Which features are available in which tier is explained in Chapter 3.

GitHub Copilot is a set of tools that can help you understand or produce code, either by helping you write code in an editor, talking to your code base to gain more information, or getting help from integrated functionality inside the web interface of GitHub.

This all starts with GitHub Copilot leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to complete the current line(s) of code that you are working on, by adding a suggestion when you stop typing for a couple of milliseconds, or when you hit the Return key. Depending on your color scheme, a suggestion is shown in gray or dimmed text in the editor, behind your cursor. You can see this in Figure 1.1, where the cursor is on line 9. This is also called “ghost text.” This text is a continuation of the code you already typed, and GitHub Copilot finds the most logical completion of the code and suggests it for you to accept.

Figure 1.1: Example of “ghost text” inside of VS Code

The primary use case of GitHub Copilot is helping you with your code base while you are creating code. This is done by integrating the different functionalities in an existing Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This is often also referred to as an “editor.” You work on your code inside the editor to add new methods and features to your application or scripts that you are working on.

Editors with GitHub Copilot plugins

The list of IDEs that have a plugin for GitHub Copilot is still growing. Currently, the following editors have some support for GitHub Copilot:

If you are using parts of the rest of the GitHub suite of products, then you can greatly enhance that experience with tooling from GitHub Copilot as well. After logging into https://github.com, you can start chatting with GitHub Copilot on top of any repository (see Figure 1.6) or open it in an immersive window to chat without the context of a repository. This is great for researching things and having a separate, contextless window to the side to quickly look up things while you are working. Need to look up how to install packages in a specific package manager? Then this chat window is the right place to ask about it. Personally, we have this tab open in our browser all the time.

Figure 1.6: Chat on the GitHub interface

Next to the chat, you will also find GitHub Copilot integrations in a lot of places on the web interface. Following the steps in the SDLC, it starts with researching new features you want to build and planning...

In this chapter, we discussed the functionalities that GitHub Copilot offers so that we can place them in the right context, from integrations into your editor of choice to integrations on the web interface of GitHub. This is not bound to only the GitHub suite of tools, as it is offered in different IDEs from third-party vendors. You can use GitHub Copilot against any code file, no matter where it is stored. Your code does not need to be stored on GitHub at all if you do not want to.

We looked at the main IDE features, such as coding suggestions while you type, the chat interface, and inline chat. Keep in mind that not all editors offer the exact same features, so look at editors’ or plugins’ documentation for more specific information. In the web interface on GitHub.com, there are features that will help you throughout the entire SDLC: from requirements engineering to creating an issue to the creation of pull requests, there are integrations with GitHub...