CoPilot For Eclipse - The Joule Alternative

GitHub CoPilot works alongside you in the Eclipse Editor. It autogenerates code suggestions, provides correction syntax.

Free version includes:

50 agent mode or chat requests per month

2,000 completions per month

Access to Haiku 4.5, GPT-5 mini, and more

Copilot CLI

Getting started with Copilot. 

Open Eclipse Marketplace

Search for Copilot and Install Copilot4Eclipse

Restart and a new menu item will appear

Click Copy Code and Open

Paste the code when prompted

This will successfully connect the IDE to Copilot.

Now that we have added Copilot to Eclipse, let us configure it for sap abap. Go to Copilot > Preferences

Ensure ABAP is selected, if not, select it and save.

Let us test the automatic code generation by creating a class.

Create a class.

When creating the method the comment and methods are auto generated.

Press tab to add the auto generated codes

The class has some errors. Lets use the chat panel to get answers. From the menu open chat panel.

In the chat panel the class is automatically added. Lets ask in the chat to fix the code.

The Copilot recognizes the error and also performs the requested operation. It generates the correct code which can be copy pasted.

The generated code has some issues because the return type is not fully typed.

It returned a fix for this.

Well, the code is not perfect and there are restrictions of using SPFLI in trial server.

However, we were successfully able to use Copilot in Eclipse for free. 

Thanks.

Installing AI Helper Chat in Eclipse

 Today I will be installing the AI Helper Chat in Eclipse. Here is an overview of AI Helper Chat

AI-powered chat directly inside Eclipse, compatible with OpenAI, Ollama, Gemini, Qwen, and DeepSeek.

Key highlights:

• Support for multiple AI models: Ollama (local), OpenAI, Gemini, Qwen, and DeepSeek.
• Enhanced in-Eclipse chat experience: streaming responses, recent chat history, and Markdown/code rendering.
• Project-level credential configuration.
• Preparation for file/project reading support ([ACTION:READ_*], under development).
• Streaming optimization and PDE dependency fixes.

Coming soon: full file and project reading, improved remote model selection.

More Information: https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/ai-helper-chat#details

Steps to Install.

Drag the Install button into Eclipse

Alternatively you can open Help > Eclipse Marketplace in Eclipse and Search AI Helper Chat

Trust and Click next and finish. Restart Eclipse.

Addon was not working properly during test so this will be updated later

How to install ABAP Development Tools in Eclipse

Step 1 Download and run Eclipse IDE from https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/

Step 2: Select Eclipse for Java

Step 3: Download and Install via installer or download zip package and extract into a folder.

Step 4: Go to eclipse folder and start eclipse.exe

Step 5: Create a workspace and launch

Step 6: Add the ADT Plug-in to Eclipse. Click Help > Install New Software

Step 7: Enter the latest ADT URL https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/latest in the Work with section, press enter, select ABAP Development Tools and click Next >.

Step 8: Select as shown and click Next

Step 9: Accept and Click Finish

Step 10: Trust the Selected

Step 11: After installation is complete it will ask to restart Eclipse. Installation will download from Internet so it will take some time.

Step 12: Now ADT is installed. Switch to the ABAP perspective. Therefore select Window > Perspective > Other Perspective > Other.

Step 13: Select ABAP perspective

Step 14: The lastest ABAP Perspective will open and it will show Joule integrated in the perspective

Step 15: Lets sign in to HANA Trial Cockpit

Step 16: In Eclipse Open Cloud Project

Step 17: It will ask for the Service Instance URL

Step 18: To get the URL we need to service key. First go to https://cockpit.hanatrial.ondemand.com/trial/#/home/trial and login to your trial account (if not already done)

Step 19: Click the subaccount

Step 20: Under Cloud Foundry there will be instance for abap (already created earlier)

Step 21: Select the credentials

Step 22: Copy the URL from the Form. It is also present in the JSON

Step 23: Paste the URL in Eclipse

Step 24: Open Login Page via browser

Step 25: It will login autoatically as we have already logged into HANA Trial account via browser.

Step 26: Click Finish

Step 27: After login we can see the main package and user packages

Step 28: Here we can create our own package and start development. Right Click ZLOCAL, New > ABAP Package.

Step 29: Our package is created

Step 30: Right click on the package or select from the menu to create ABAP Repository Objects