Customizing Geany

To set preferences related to how the IDE behaves, navigate to Edit > Preferences:

Geany also supports a number of optional plugins. You can find the available plugins under Tools > Plugin Manager. In the desktop, Geany is set up with the Scope debugger enabled by default.

Adjusting build commands depends on the context in which they're set. Outside the context of a project file, when you open a source code file and the edit compile and build commands, the updates are saved in the corresponding filetypes file under ~/.config/filedefs. These filedefs define the default behavior for each file type.

For example, create a test.c file with no project file in Geany. Save it in the home directory:

Edit the compile and build commands for that file. Go to Build and select Set Build Commands. Update the Compile and Build C commands. Add the -g flag. Save the updates.

Notice that in ~/.config/geany/filedefs/filetypes.c, the -g flag has been added to the Compile and Build rules under the build menu tag:

Additionally, you can manually edit these files in Geany. To edit the filetypes.cpp defaults, go to Tools > Configuration Files > Filetype Configuration > C > filetypes.cpp. Then, you can add the -g flag:

You can adjust build commands for a specific project. When adjusting the build commands for a project, the updated commands affect the specific project only and don't update any default commands. The updates are saved in a .geany file for that project.

For example, create a new C project and edit its commands to remove the -g option that you added in the "Adjusting build commands" section above:

In addition to modifying existing build/compile commands, you can add new commands under the Make commands, Independent commands, or Execute commands sections in Project Properties. Each new command added shows up in the Build tab:

The Maelstrom project under the ~/projects directory is a good example that contains customized build commands. For more information on this project, refer to the "Maelstrom" section.