[FEAT]: Command to run code

[asportnoy]

Describe the need

One feature that the GitHub next beta had which this is missing is being able to automatically run the command. This version only has a "copy" option, and to make it worse, you have to press "exit" after copying before you can actually do anothing with the command. This a much worse user experience.

Few things I think could be improved here:

• Automatically exit after copying the command
• Add an option to run the command as a primary action instead of copy.
• Add an option to output the command to a file like with the beta, which makes it possible to build this better into our own workflows

Version

v0.5.2-beta

Relevant terminal output

N/A

[andyfeller]

@asportnoy : Thank you for creating this issue! 🙇

This was a difficult question the team asked itself when rewriting the GitHub Next technical preview: "How important was being able to execute the code? What are the ramifications if it was destructive or harmful?".

At the time, we erred on the side of focusing on the rewrite while hearing back from our users. That said, we have heard this feedback also from Hubbers in the weeks leading up to Universe, so I believe I can say the team is open to the idea.

[asportnoy]

The GH Next preview had a confirmation prompt after choosing "execute" to avoid people accidentally running harmful commands, which could definitely be used here.

Another potential option which I used for my custom Fish Shell wrapper is to have it set the prompt (using the builtin commandline command) but not actually execute it, which also has the advantage of allowing me to tweak the command myself before running it. However, I'm not sure if other shells have a way to set the prompt, so that may be an issue.

Regardless, making it exit after copying is an easy step which I think should be done regardless. Also adding the optional flag to output the command to a file lets people build custom wrappers like I made for Fish which would allow people to make it execute automatically if they prefer, or to do other cool things with it as well.

[hamadzidani]

The GH Next preview had a confirmation prompt after choosing "execute" to avoid people accidentally running harmful commands, which could definitely be used here.

Another potential option which I used for my custom Fish Shell wrapper is to have it set the prompt (using the builtin commandline command) but not actually execute it, which also has the advantage of allowing me to tweak the command myself before running it. However, I'm not sure if other shells have a way to set the prompt, so that may be an issue.

Regardless, making it exit after copying is an easy step which I think should be done regardless. Also adding the optional flag to output the command to a file lets people build custom wrappers like I made for Fish which would allow people to make it execute automatically if they prefer, or to do other cool things with it as well.

I use Fish as well, could you tell how you set that wrapper to set the prompt?

[0xdevalias]

could you tell how you set that wrapper to set the prompt?

@hamadzidani A little ChatGPT and a little Google suggests:

• https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/commandline.html

  • commandline can be used to set or get the current contents of the command line buffer.

    With no parameters, commandline returns the current value of the command line.

    With CMD specified, the command line buffer is erased and replaced with the contents of CMD.

As for other shells, this is what ChatGPT had to say (I gave this a quick test, and it seemed to work):

In other shells like bash, there isn't a built-in function exactly like commandline in fish. However, you can use a similar trick by binding a keyboard shortcut to an echo command that prints out the command you want to stage. Here's an example of how you might do this in bash using bind:

bind '"\C-p": "echo This is the command"'

This bash command binds Ctrl+p (written as \C-p) to output echo This is the command to the command line. The command will be on your command line, but it won't execute until you press Enter.

Please note that the exact syntax and capabilities can vary between different shells and their respective versions.

And for zsh (I did test this, and it seems to work):

In zsh, you can use the print -z command to achieve a similar effect to fish shell's commandline. The print -z command puts a command into the command buffer (like typing it out), but doesn't execute it. Here's a simple example:

print -z "echo 'This is the command'"

When you run this command in zsh, it will populate the command line with echo 'This is the command', but it won't execute until you press Enter.

If you want to bind this to a keyboard shortcut in zsh, you can use the bindkey command. Here’s how you can bind this to a keyboard shortcut, for example, Ctrl+x, Ctrl+e:

bindkey '^X^E' my-prep-command

And you'd have a function my-prep-command that looks like this:

function my-prep-command {
  BUFFER="echo 'This is the command'"
  zle end-of-line
}
zle -N my-prep-command

This sets up a zsh line editor (zle) widget called my-prep-command that, when invoked, sets the current command line (BUFFER) to echo 'This is the command' and then moves the cursor to the end of the line with zle end-of-line. The bindkey line binds this widget to the specified key sequence.

Further reading on print -z:

• https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Shell-Builtin-Commands.html#:~:text=a%20table%20format.-,%2Dz,-Push%20the%20arguments

  • -z: Push the arguments onto the editing buffer stack, separated by spaces.

Further reading about the zsh line editor:

• https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Zsh-Line-Editor.html
• https://thevaluable.dev/zsh-line-editor-configuration-mouseless/

[spenserblack]

and to make it worse, you have to press "exit" after copying before you can actually do anothing with the command.

Piggybacking on this to suggest that maybe, once the user has selected Copy command to clipboard, the default selected option could be Exit instead of Copy command to clipboard once again. I'm assuming that users will want to exit and run the command after copying a majority of the time. At least, it seemed strange to me that after selecting Copy command to clipboard that choice was still there and selected.

[andyfeller]

Firstly, I just want to say I love the collaboration! 😻

As I mentioned in #5 (comment), I think the proper way to support this is by implementing something similar to what was done in the GitHub Next technical preview. That said, this alias wrapper solution was very Unix/Linux friendly but not so much PowerShell and possibly others.

[yongkangchen]

Greetings! To facilitate command execution, I've established cps to wrap the Copilot CLI command.
You can find it at https://github.com/yongkangchen/cps/tree/main.

[Wladefant]

@yongkangchen nice. Yes honestly @andyfeller too much prompts, the thing about cli is that you can do it fast, or otherwise you would just go to chatgpt or copilot. I even found that the confirmation was too much. We need something very simple.

For example:
1.?? "show files"
2. thinking...
answer: ls
(then like before directly the explanation (very important to not run into problems))
run this command [y/n/Revise]
3. enter is yes n is no, r is revise
4. that is it

No more no less or I would just go to chatgpt

[vuon9]

It's a bit annoying when the behavior is different to github-copilot-cli npmjs package behavior. Copy should have an option to immediately quit the interactive UI after copied and also will be the best to have another option to output command to anywhere else (cli, file).

[andyfeller]

It's a bit annoying when the behavior is different to github-copilot-cli npmjs package behavior. Copy should have an option to immediately quit the interactive UI after copied and also will be the best to have another option to output command to anywhere else (cli, file).

@vuon9 : hear you, loud and clear 👂