A GitHub developer advocate shares her experience using the GitHub Copilot app to modernize a decade-old personal codebase (React 15, Less, react-bootstrap). The post walks through using stacked sessions — a feature where each Copilot session builds on the previous one — to break a large modernization task into manageable pull requests. Key highlights include switching branches mid-session when a conflict was discovered, using Plan mode to decide whether to replace react-bootstrap entirely, and leveraging stacked sessions to create chained pull requests that each target the branch below them. The result was a clean, incremental migration without the usual chaos of large-scope refactors.
Table of contents
First step: Could I one-shot this?Second step: Realizing I had tried this beforeThird step: Findings after testingFourth step: Stacking a session on top of the otherFifth step: Sailing off into the sunset with stacked pull requestsTags:Written by3.9K Impressions