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GitHub Copilot – October 23rd Update

Visual Studio

🤖 ARM Support

Version 1.116.0.0 of the Visual Studio extension now supports ARM.

🔒 Support for Proxies That Use Basic Authentication

Version 1.116.0.0 of the Visual Studio extension now support proxies that use a Basic Authentication scheme through an environment variable.

Visual Studio Code

🧪 Improvements to /tests Chat Command

The /test slash command is now better at detecting the testing framework you are using and will generate new tests in the same style, available with the GitHub Copilot Chat extension for Visual Studio, now in beta.

💬 Multi-Turn Chat Conversations

Chat can now refer to your previous messages to help answer your questions. To learn more about Copilot Chat beta in Visual Studio Code, head to the latest blog post.

💻 Ask GitHub Copilot defaults to the Chat view

A few months ago, we introduced an Ask GitHub Copilot option in the Command Palette so that you can take your query in the Command Palette and open it in a Copilot chat if the Command Palette didn’t provide a useful answer.

We gathered feedback on the preferred experience Ask GitHub Copilot should open: the Chat view in the side bar or Quick Chat. In an effort to make the first time experience more familiar, we chose the Chat view. With that said, if you would like Ask GitHub Copilot to open in Quick Chat, you can change the behavior with the askChatLocation setting:
“workbench.commandPalette.experimental.askChatLocation”: “quickChat”

🎨 Command Palette Similar Commands

This iteration, the Visual Studio Code team shipped the similar commands feature in the Command Palette. Copilot Chat users get an even better similar commands experience because we can use Copilot AI to determine similarity. These smarts help with synonyms and intent, and in our testing, Copilot was able to handle similarity across spoken languages as well. Finding the exact command you’re looking for in the Command Palette has never been easier!

General

📜 Enhanced Multi-Line Completions

We’ve heard your feedback and are excited to announce significant improvements to our multiline suggestions feature. ver the past several weeks, we have diligently tested and rolled out an update to enhance the number and quality of multiline suggestions. The model now does a better job of understanding when to suggest multiline code snippets, and you’ll notice that Copilot suggests multiline completions much more frequently.

This update impacts the following programming languages:
* JavaScript
* TypeScript
* Python

☀ Improved Copilot Content Filtering

We’ve introduced changes to our filtering mechanisms to incorporate more context from your environment and prompt, allowing for more accurate detection of abusive prompts and fewer false positives.

Questions, suggestions, or ideas?

Join the conversation in the Copilot community discussion. We’d love to hear from you!

Code scanning default setup automatically includes all CodeQL supported languages

Code scanning default setup now automatically attempts to analyze all CodeQL supported languages in a repository. This means default setup supports all CodeQL languages at the organization level, including enabling code scanning from an organization's Security Overview coverage page or settings page.

Previously, users would have to manually include the languages C, C++, C#, Java, or Kotlin in a default setup analysis, and enabling these languages was not supported at the organization level. Now, code scanning default setup automatically attempts to analyze all languages supported by CodeQL in a repository. If any analyses fail, the failed language will be automatically deselected from the code scanning configuration. Any alerts from the successfully analyzed languages will be shown on GitHub. This means code scanning will automatically set up the best possible configuration to get started easily with CodeQL and show the most relevant alerts to developers.

A warning banner is shown in the repository settings page if any languages fail and are deseslected. The "edit configuration" page shows all languages in the configuration, and allows users to change the language selection if required. For more information about the languages and versions supported by CodeQL and code scanning, see Supported languages and frameworks. To learn more about code scanning, see About code scanning.

This change is already available on GitHub.com and will be available in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.12.

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Authress is now a GitHub secret scanning partner

GitHub secret scanning protects users by searching repositories for known types of secrets such as tokens and private keys. By identifying and flagging these secrets, our scans help prevent data leaks and fraud.

We have partnered with Authress to scan for their service client access keys and their user API tokens to help secure our mutual users in public repositories. Authress access keys allow users to secure applications and platforms through machine-to-machine authentication and they enable granular resource-based authorization. GitHub will forward any exposed access keys found in public repositories to Authress, who will automatically revoke the exposed access key, create an audit trail message that can be ingested by SIEM technologies, and send an email alert to your Authress account admin. Read more information about Authress API access keys.

All users can scan for and block Authress keys from entering their public repositories for free with push protection. GitHub Advanced Security customers can also scan for and block Authress keys in their private repositories.

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