Modernization at Scale with the CLI and CI/CD Pipelines

by Ayan Gupta

Ayan Gupta shows how to take GitHub Copilot’s Java modernization workflow out of the IDE and run it at scale from the terminal, producing assessment reports, upgrade plans, diffs, and pull requests across many repositories, and wiring the process into repeatable CI/CD and scheduled jobs.

Overview

Modernizing a single legacy Java app in an IDE can work well, but this episode focuses on scaling that workflow to dozens or hundreds of repositories by moving it into a CLI-driven, automatable process.

Using the GitHub Copilot CLI to modernize multiple repositories

The episode covers how to use the GitHub Copilot CLI modernize command to:

Delegating work to parallel cloud coding agents

Ayan explains how to delegate assessment and upgrade work to cloud coding agents that can run in parallel, so modernization work can be performed across a large repo portfolio concurrently.

Reviewing consolidated results across a repo portfolio

The video describes reviewing consolidated assessment outputs across multiple repositories, including:

From plans to pull requests

The episode walks through the workflow where agents:

Fitting modernization into CI/CD and scheduled automation

The episode positions CLI-based modernization as something that can be operationalized via:

Treating modernization as continuous maintenance

A key theme is that modernization becomes ongoing maintenance rather than a one-off project when the workflow is scriptable and repeatable.