Highlights:
- According to GitHub, the two applications will soon receive a new chat window where developers may add Copilot X instructions.
- According to Microsoft, Copilot X can inspect the code presented in a pull request and assess if it has been tested well enough.
The GitHub division of Microsoft Corp. introduced Copilot X, an artificial intelligence tool powered in part by GPT-4 that can help developers write code more quickly.
The tool is an improved version of the Copilot assistant that GitHub released in the middle of 2021. It has a variety of additional features not present in the original.
Microsoft’s VS Code and Visual Studio code editing programs, will integrate Copilot X into their user interfaces. According to GitHub, the two applications will soon receive a new chat window where developers may add Copilot X instructions. A developer may, for instance, ask the tool to discover errors in a code snippet or produce brand-new code from the start.
The integration of the code editor will be released alongside a feature called Copilot Voice. It will allow developers to interface with Copilot X using spoken commands. In addition to generating code, the functionality offers additional activities, such as moving to a specific program file area.
A second set of new AI capabilities focuses on pull requests. A pull request is a developer’s document describing new code to coworkers. If all technical criteria are completed, other developers can evaluate the document, make comments, and approve the new code for public release.
Copilot X leverages the GPT-4 model from OpenAI LP to accelerate the process of producing pull requests. The functionality enables developers to provide a little text fragment and automatically transform it into a comprehensive explanation of their code. In the future, GitHub intends to provide an upgraded version of the feature that functions as an autocomplete tool and can generate several sentences.
Thomas Dohmke, Chief Executive Officer at GitHub, said, “We’re testing new capabilities internally where GitHub Copilot will automatically suggest sentences and paragraphs as developers create pull requests by dynamically pulling in information about code changes.”
Whenever a pull request for new code has been produced, developers examine it to evaluate whether it has been thoroughly tested for flaws. According to GitHub, Copilot X will also assist with this duty.
According to Microsoft, Copilot X can inspect the code presented in a pull request and assess if it has been tested well enough. If the tool detects areas for improvement, it will generate the missing tests automatically. According to GitHub, software teams can tailor Copilot X’s recommendations to their needs.
Other new capabilities concentrate on two fundamental components of the work of software developers: reading documentation and composing command-line queries.
Teams who develop software produce documentation that explains how their code operates. In certain circumstances, this documentation may consist of hundreds or even thousands of pages of text, making locating individual bits of information difficult. Copilot X will allow users to type inquiries about a piece of code into a chat window and instantly receive the answer.
Thomas Dohmke stated, “We’re starting with documentation for React, Azure Docs, and MDN, so we can learn and iterate quickly with the developers and users of these projects. We’re also working to bring this functionality to any organization’s repositories and internal documentation.”
CLI scripting is a regular activity in software development projects. The CLI, or command line interface, is the application developers use to configure and maintain the servers on which their code runs. To perform such operations, developers must compose queries using a technically difficult syntax.
Copilot X aims to streamline the procedure. It will allow developers to input CLI instructions in standard English instead of the complex default syntax. According to GitHub, as a consequence, server configuration processes will take less time to complete.