These instructions will guide you through configuring a GitHub Codespaces environment that you can use to run the course labs. If you prefer and if you know one of the other IDEs supported by Copilot, you can use that. But the instructions will reference the codespace version.
These steps must be completed prior to starting the actual labs.
GitHub has recently made a free version of Copilot available for limited use each month. You can use that version to do most of the labs in this course. If you prefer, you can signup for their paid individual plan by following the details below, but this is optional for this training.
If you want to signup for a paid Copilot option...
When signed into GitHub, click on your profile picture/icon in the upper right and either select Copilot
OR select Settings->Copilot and sign up.
You can also find help there for using Copilot in other supported IDEs, set the switch for whether or not to allow matching public code suggestions, etc.
Step 2. To create your working environment for the labs, create a codespace by clicking on the button below AND wait for it to finish:
Click on this button ⬇️
Then click on the option to create a new codespace.
**This will run for several minutes while it gets the basic setup done. Then it will pause for a few minutes and then continue with initializing the python environment. You will see a screen like the below one when it is initializing the python environment.
After the codespace has completely initialized, you'll need to open a new terminal to have the python environment active. To do this, click on the "+" sign in the upper right (see screenshot). Then you should see "(py_env)" at the start of the prompt.
After the codespace has started, open the labs document either in a separate browser tab or by going to the file tree on the left, finding the file named labs.md, and clicking on it.)
This will open it up in a tab above your terminal. Then you can follow along with the steps in the labs. Any command in the gray boxes is either code intended to be run in the console or code to be updated in a file.
Labs doc: Copilot Testing Labs
While logged in to GitHub, go to https://github.com/settings/codespaces.
Scroll down and find the section on the page labeled Default idle timeout.
Increase the default timeout value to 90 minutes and then select the Save button.
(NOTE: If your codespace does time out at some point in the course, there should be a button to restart it. In that case, you will need to run the minikube start command again.)
