Preview NEW Copilot Chat Features for Eclipse

We continue to make significant progress towards the Copilot4Eclipse 1.2.0 update. Today we are making available the 2nd early-access (EA2) release of 1.2 that includes many new Chat features.  As we walk through the new features of this update you will notice that the Chat Panel includes an  experimental tag as a reminder that all Chat features are still in development and may change in future updates.

Here’s what’s new in 1.2.0 Early-Access #2:

Create Multiple Chat Conversations

Now you can create more than 1 Chat conversation. 

Chat Panel gets a Conversation Main View

The Chat Panel includes a new Conversation List View for viewing all of your conversations.  Conversations are listed in the order of most-recent-use. The active conversation is shown outlined in blue.

From the Conversation List View you can create a conversation, switch to a different conversation, delete a conversation or delete all conversations.

Switching between Conversations

From the Conversation List View select any conversation to begin using it in the Main Conversation view.

Conversation Naming

When a conversation is created it will have a generic name.  As you dialog with Chat the default title of the conversation will be automatically updated with a more descriptive title generated by GitHub Copilot.  You if want to control the naming of a conversation you can manually provide a name for a conversation.  Once you provide a custom name for a conversation the auto-naming feature will discontinue automatically updating the title in future interactions.

Quick Scrolling a Conversation

Quickly scroll to the bottom or top of the a long conversation using new toolbar buttons.

Persisted Conversation across Eclipse Sessions

Conversations are now saved and restored across your Eclipse sessions.  Your conversations are persisted until you manually delete it.

Deleting Conversations

With the ability to create conversations comes the need to delete unwanted conversations.  Conversations can be deleted from either the Conversation View toolbar menu or from the Conversations List toolbar.

Support for GitHub Organizational Chat Control

Support of organizational access control to GitHub Copilot Chat features is now supported.  In the screenshot below the Chat Panel appears as shown on the right when Chat is disabled at an organizational level.  If organizational access to chat features is enabled while the Chat panel is in the disabled state, simply restart Eclipse to resume use of Chat features.

What’s Next?

With the 1.2.0 EA-2 update completed our efforts are now focused on wrapping up development in preparation for a mid-June release of Copilot4Eclipse 1.2.  What you can look forward to in the next update will include much better UI theme support, numerous small tweaks and reliability improvements.  Until then happy coding with Copilot4Eclipse. 

Learn more about Copilot4Eclipse.