Introduction
Github Copilot [1] is one of a few offerings that can be used in code completion and assistance. There are other options out there such as Tabnine [2]
I paid yearly for Tabnine, and have awhile left for my renewal, but they don’t offer an arm64 variant for Ubuntu, meaning while I can use it in OSX, I can’t use it in a virtual machine. This bothered me a fair amount, so I am trying Github Copilot.
The purpose of this article isn’t to describe my thoughts on AI-assisted coding, but to work at fixing it in Ubuntu.
The problem in Ubuntu
The version of Node, which Github Copilot relies upon, is around the version 12 variant in Ubuntu (latest version, server, with desktop mode installed). The message is incredibly cryptic, simply stating that it couldn’t initiate the Github login process. Looking at the logs, it’s even more cryptic stating that it simply restarted with no other useful information present. I found it came down to the version of Node installed. Upgrading it is the easiest solution, but how to upgrade isn’t the easiest.
I found you can visit Nodesource and follow the instructions present on https://github.com/nodesource/distributions#debinstall
I ended up upgrading to version 16, and it worked. A higher version likely also works, but 16 worked for me.
I’ll write something up in the future about AI assisted coding.
