Alternative to GitHub Copilot

[rkrug]

I understand that GitHub copilot can not be loaded into Positron because of licensing issues. But is there a good alternative to use, particularly for R?

[iainmwallace]

I like the continue extension - https://www.continue.dev

[rkrug]

Thanks - but this confuses me completely in setting it up. will keep it in mind as it seems to offer many options.

[jthomasmock]

You can see most of the AI extensions by searching for "AI" at: Open VSX https://open-vsx.org/?search=AI&sortBy=downloadCount&sortOrder=desc OR in the Positron Extensions pane.

We do plan to get some support for GitHub Copilot in the future.

Going purely off total downloads, not stack-ranked as I have not used all of them and am thus not vouching for any particular tool.

• GitLab Workflow (includes some AI features)
• Tabnine: Chat + Code completion
• Continue -- use many different local models or API endpoints
• Codeium: Chat + Code completion
• Cody by SourceGraph: Chat + Code completion
• Google Gemini: Chat + Code completion
• Amazon Q: Chat + Code completion
• Chat by GenieAI
• Huggingface LLMs for code completion

There are many other integrations for local models, OpenAI/ChatGPT, or various other as well.

Continue for example has a nice integration and allows for running local models with no internet/API calls.

[rkrug]

Thanks -
good to her that you are planning GitHub Copilot integration!

I like the list, especially the info for each. I think I will try Tabbing for the moment.

[rkrug]

I have started using Tabbing, and it works nicely - I would say faster than GitHub Copilot. I only miss 4th Command-I to ask directly from the selected code.

[jthomasmock]

Great! I think you're using Tabnine. If so, you might check the shortcuts or use the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P) to focus code and ask a question about it:

There's also a bit more in their docs: https://docs.tabnine.com/main/getting-started/quickstart#id-4.-getting-more-out-of-tabnine

[hafen]

Are you using tabnine for R or Python? I've been trying it for R and its suggestions are almost always useless and never what I have in mind, while GitHub Copilot seems to be able to read my mind.

[rkrug]

I have switched to Codeium - no particular reason.

[rkrug]

Thanks a lot - works perfectly.

[ntluong95]

I don't have subscription for TabNine. Any plan in near future that Copilot is going to be supported?

[rkrug]

I neither - but it works (at least it gives me answers which are coming close to co-pilot).

[SoaresAlisson]

I'm using codeium https://codeium.com/ It's free for individual users and has plugins to nvim, vscode as well as for Positron, and a lot of other IDEs, but not for Rstudio, so long as I know. It also works like magic with R, reading your thoughts and printing is as code.

[ntluong95]

Wow that's very good alternative. Free version even doesn't need to register

[SoaresAlisson]

I'm using it in nvim. It demands me to log in in the website and paste the API key in nvim console.

[taiyodayo]

This was super quick to setup! And has features like auto doc-string generation right in the editor.
I'm liking this more than copilot already.

[kv9898]

I would vote for Codeium

[davidzgli]

Have anybody tried Cline (previously Claude Dev)? I just started. It works insane to read your quarto script, and add a new section, such as compute summary statistics for a tibble grouped by a factor.

[davidzgli]

The problem I have with Cline is the "Shell Integration" is unavailable in Positron. It makes Cline not be able to see the shell output, and cannot automate some jobs. I am not sure if it is intentionally disabled in Position since "Shell Integration" seems to work in vscode. My vscode version is 1.93.0.