# Copilot setup in VSCode

## Apply for GitHub Education benefits

* Login to GitHub, and add your lab email to your profile;
* Click your icon on the top right corner of the page, and go to "settings";
* Click "Emails" in the "Access" section of the sidebar;
* Add your lab email if it is not there yet.
* Go to GitHub Education at https://education.github.com/ or use [this link](https://education.github.com/discount_requests/application) to apply for GitHub benefits;
* Select "Teacher" academic status; according to the eligibility requirements, NERSC staff are eligible.
> * Have a GitHub account.
> * Be an educator, faculty member, or researcher at a recognized educational institution.
> * Be able to provide documentation from your school which demonstrates your current employment status.
* Choose your lab email in the next section;
* Put in the name of the school as "Lawrence Bekeley National Laboratory";
* Write a few sentences about how you plan to use GitHub, like "hosting repositories for non-profit research, CI/CD, use GitHub Pages, GitHub project" etc;
* Click "Continue" to go to the next page;
* Upload or take a picture of your lab ID, and click submit;
* In a few minutes, you should see your application is approved in the system

## Obtain GitHub Copilot subscription

* Go to your GitHub settings page again, and select "Copilot" in the "Code, planning and automation" section of the sidebar;
* Click "Enable GitHub Copilot", you will be informed that your account get the Copilot subscription for free due to academic status;

## Setting up Copilot in VSCode

[This link](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/using-github-copilot/getting-started-with-github-copilot?tool=vscode) goes to the GitHub documentation page for this topic. It is well written and easy to follow. You can find official guides for integrating Copilot with other IDEs or editors, such as "JetBrains", "Vim" etc. Emacs is not officially supported, but [here](https://robert.kra.hn/posts/2023-02-22-copilot-emacs-setup/) is a nice guide on how to integrate it in Emacs.

In short, you will need to:
* Install GitHub Copilot plugin in VSCode;
* The installation process will guide you through GitHub login process;
* Once installed, you will see hint boxes in your coding space to let you know how to use GitHub Copilot.