Positron IDE accessing GitHub Copilot via {chattr} R Package (Public Beta)

Опубликовано: 21 Сентябрь 2024
на канале: TheCoatlessProfessor

Timeline ---

00:00 Greetings and introduction to Positron IDE for data science and its ability to use a code assist agent like GitHub Copilot.
00:15 Mentioning that the demonstration will focus on R, as there's no known official extension for GitHub Copilot in Positron.
00:32 Checking the Extensions tab in Positron and noting the absence of a GitHub Copilot extension.
00:45 Highlighting the availability of other generic code assist extensions.
01:00 Switch into the R interpreter
01:10 Demonstrating the installation of the remotes package in an R session.
01:18 Installing the 'chattr' package from GitHub using the remotes package from Posit's mlverse organization.
01:40 Running the chattr::chatr_app() in Positron, allowing the use of GitHub Copilot Chat or chat completions with GPT-4o.
02:00 Opting to use GitHub Copilot Chat and opening a Shiny application for interaction.
02:13 Demonstrating a chat with GitHub Copilot Chat, requesting an R function that counts down from 10 to 1 and prints "blast off".
02:37 Viewing the generated function on the right-hand side of the Shiny app.
02:51 Copying the generated function and pasting it into a new R script in Positron.
03:04 Discussing the downside of using a Shiny app as it overwrites the main console, requiring stopping the Shiny app to run the script.
03:25 Running the R script in Positron and executing the 'blastoff' function.
03:41 Displaying the output of the 'blastoff' function generated by the LLM model.
03:50 Concluding remarks on using GitHub Copilot in Positron and closing the video.

Summary ---

In this video, we use the Positron IDE (Public Beta) with GitHub Copilot through the {chattr} R package.

Unfortunately, Positron does not have an official GitHub Copilot plugin nor is it likely to get one due to licensing, c.f.

Thus, we need to find an alternative way to access GitHub Copilot. One avenue is to use the {chattr} R package created by Posit's mlverse team for an AI-augmented coding session. The {chattr} package includes a Shiny application that can be launched and viewed inside of the Positron browser.

To have both GitHub Copilot and GPT-4o available, we'll need to use the development back of {chattr} on GitHub. Note, that the CRAN version will only show GitHub Copilot as being available.

As a result, we'll first need to install the `remotes` package to obtain a package from GitHub using:

install.packages("remotes")

Then, we need to install the latest development version of {chattr} using:

remotes::install_github("mlverse/chattr")

Next, we need to initiate a chat session using:

chattr::chattr_app()

Specify 1 for Copilot and 2 for GPT-4o.

We can then submit queries on the right-hand side.

However, before running output from the Queries, we must stop the chat otherwise the R console will not be available for us to run code.

Links ---

GitHub Copilot:

{chattr} R package:

Code scripts:

Positron IDE ---

Positron can be obtained from:

This was demonstrated on:

Positron Version: 2024.06.1 (Universal) build 27
Code - OSS Version: 1.90.0
Commit: a893e5b282612ccb2200102957ac38d3c14e5196
Date: 2024-06-26T02:08:06.673Z
Electron: 29.4.0
Chromium: 122.0.6261.156
Node.js: 20.9.0
V8: 12.2.281.27-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 23.5.0