[gdal-dev] Integrating AI assisted code review for PR in OSGeo/GDAL?

[Laurențiu Nicola]

That snippet blew up on social media, but it applies to the Web and probably Windows incarnations of Copilot. The Microsoft 365 one is explicitly excluded, and the GitHub Copilot terms of service are in gh.io.

Laurentiu

On Thu, Apr 2, 2026, at 18:48, Andrew C Aitchison via gdal-dev wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Apr 2026, Even Rouault via gdal-dev wrote:
>
>> I think it could be worth to have the *possibility* of requiring an AI 
>> assisted review for pull requests, directly available from our canonical 
>> repo. I've been occasionaly experimenting Gemini Code Assist and Copilot in 
>> my personal fork. Copilot had repeated failures a few weeks ago but seems to 
>> have been fixed recently, so I've more experience with /gemini review. I find 
>> it useful and it has spotted real issues, some of them would have probab
>> went unnoticed during classic human review, and with an acceptable rate of 
>> false positives or debatable remarks.
>>
>> So my proposal would be to have the tool(s)  enabled in OSGeo/GDAL repo, *on 
>> demand* (not sure if that's possible for Copilot. Is that a setting? Although 
>> I'm not trusting github enough to be sure if we want to increase our use of 
>> it.  Gemini review is definitely on demand and an external github app we can 
>> disable in one click) for developers or reviewers that want to trigger them. 
>> I don't think having them to run systematically is a good idea, because some 
>> PRs are too trivial to get any benefit from them, and having them enabled 
>> systematically lead to noise as PR comments and notifications.
>>
>> I definitely don't think those tools should replace human review. AI tools 
>> are instructed to flatter your ego and will never say your PR is a bad idea, 
>> which a human reviewer will occasionally say. Or they lack the global 
>> picture, etc. I see them as additional tools on top of our CI instrumentation 
>> and human review.
>
> This all sounds sensible and well though through to me.
>
> It was pointed out to me yesterday that
>    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/for-individuals/termsofuse
> warns, under
>    IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES & WARNINGS
> that:
>    Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it
>    may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice.
>    Use Copilot at your own risk.
>
> -- 
> Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
>                     andrew at aitchison.me.uk
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