11 ms·

Geany – A flyweight IDE

154 points by notRobot 6y ago

memexy 6y ago
> Build system to compile and execute your code How does a text editor also act as a build system? Do they mean dependencies are automatically discovered and compiled? Or do they mean it integrates with a makefile where you still need to specify the dependencies and the text editor will automatically run it when files change?
- mpol 6y ago
  You create a Project in Geany. It will then integrate with `make`, so when you click `build` it will run make for you. Myself I don't use this feature, I mostly use PHP code. I am very happy with Geany as a lightweight IDE or texteditor and have been using it for years.
- david_draco 6y ago
  You press F8 or F9 and it runs a command, and shows you the output.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You can customize Geany to run a command to compile your code; output will show up in a status panel. Similarly you can have a command to run your program, either in a new xterm or the built-in terminal.
squid_demon 6y ago
If you are looking for a lighter than flyweight editor check out https://github.com/rxi/lite https://github.com/rxi/lite
- app4soft 6y ago
  Cute! Is it possible to use on Android in companion with Termux app?
dragonsh 6y ago
I have used it as IDE on Linux for Python development along with vi before moving to emacs. It was my choice as it was small lightweight and could open large csv and xml. After that did not follow it, good to see it’s been constantly updated and developed.
morganvachon 6y ago
I use it as an advanced text editor on any Linux or BSD workstation I use. I'm not a developer so most of the IDE type stuff goes unused, but I do like having something as powerful as Notepad++ on Windows without resorting to cumbersome editors like Atom or VSCode. An alternative for people like me is SciTE. https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
- JNRowe 6y ago
  Perhaps you're aware, and I missed the nuance... but, geany uses the scintilla engine as its editor component¹. I was once a pretty heavy SciTE user, and it surprises me how often you can spot it in other tools when shoulder surfing or watching live demos. 1. https://github.com/geany/geany/tree/master/scintilla https://github.com/geany/geany/tree/master/scintilla
  - morganvachon 6y ago
    I am aware. :-) In fact, I used SciTE for a long time until discovering Geany via Crunchbang Linux, it was the default text editor in that distro. I found I liked its look-and-feel better than SciTE so I switched.
- aspyct 6y ago
  It's a matter of perspective I guess. Where I'm from, VSCode is considered lightweight. Cumbersome would describe NetBeans and Eclipse in my mind.
  - sigzero 6y ago
    I am not sure why VSCode is just as slow as the others you mentioned. I have them all installed.
  - morganvachon 6y ago
    If it takes more than a second to load a text editor (or even a light IDE) I have no use for it. It's not just slow to load, it's also cumbersome to use compared to my preferred tools. Even on my old Core 2 Quad with a spinning hard drive, Geany loads in a split second with several tabs already queued up. As you said, perhaps it's perspective, but even on my latest build (Ryzen 3600/RX5600XT/NVMe SSD) VSCode is agonizing compared to Notepad++ on Windows and Geany on Linux.
rickspencer3 6y ago
I use Geany as a code editor on my rpi hobby projects. The editor has been around long enough that it is reasonably fast on under powered hardware. I really appreciate having the option.
- jennasys 6y ago
  The RPi is the only place I still use it, but on that platform it works great. For Python programming on the RPi, Thonny is actually a bit better though.
victorbstan 6y ago
So we have: Vim, Emacs, BBEdit, textmate, notepad++, SublimeText, Atom, Visual Code, Geany... am I missing any?
- adrianN 6y ago
  ed is the standard editor.
  - sgt 6y ago
    ed is also relevant if you find yourself on an old Sun box with a corrupted /usr volume. In order to rescue the system you need an editor, and ed always lived in /bin. This happened to me a few years ago (2001 I think).
- reddotX 6y ago
  micro https://micro-editor.github.io/ https://micro-editor.github.io/
  - efrecon 6y ago
    micro is really good! It installs quickly and provides for just the minimal set of features to be used as a goto editor for small tasks at the terminal.
- markstos 6y ago
  Yes, most of them.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Nano.
- hoistbypetard 6y ago
  joe, pico, nano, elvis, jedit, acme, gedit, kedit... and those are just the ones that popped into my head within a few seconds. There are legions more.
- 627467 6y ago
notRobot 6y ago
Thread from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128
interfixus 6y ago
My editor and IDE of choice for the last 15 years or so. I keep rushing out and trying newfangled wonderware for the alleged features it will offer me and without which I cannot be supposed to live. And I keep, regular as clockwork, coming back to sane and solid Geany with its speed, straightforwardness, sanity, discoverability, and allround just-so convenience.
- dingdingdang 6y ago
  Agree, for the last couple of years Geany has been my primary dev environment on Linux after migrating off Windows and Notepad++, and I'm super productive on it, very stable and fast.
timw4mail 6y ago
Geany is probably the lightest IDE that works well with Rust. If you just basically want an editor with shortcuts to run terminal commands, it's a great solution.
- tomrod 6y ago
  I didn't realize it would integrate with Rust Back to geany!
maeln 6y ago
I remember Geany, it was the first "IDE" I ever used :) . I really like that the "build system" was pretty much just scripts that you could do yourself, it made it pretty much usable for any workflow easily. Granted, you could not customize it and integrate everything as much as VS Code, Atom and the likes, but it is doing its job and run extremely good on very old computer.
saagarjha 6y ago
I remember using Geany throughout high school for our Java/AP Computer Science classes, where it was the editor you were required to use. While I had it customized as much as the system would allow me, calling it an “IDE” is being a bit generous: my Sublime Text can do much, much more than Geany possibly could, and I’m not sure I would call even that an IDE. Geany is basically just a simple, slightly mediocre GUI text editor-which might be what you’re looking for in some cases-but do note that most people’s command-line text editor setups are generally more advanced than it. (If I could compare it to an editor, I’d say it’s just slightly more advanced than nano.)
- pszndr 6y ago
  It can write, build and debug code. It's an IDE.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    And just like Sublime, Geany also have an API that third-parties can use for developing their own plugins/extensions. Since Geany is open source, might have even more plugins than Sublime, although I doubt that, Sublime has been way more popular than Geany for as long as I can remember.
  - hknapp 6y ago
    Do you happen to know how to debug C++ or even just C, w/ Geany?
- onli 6y ago
  > Geany is basically just a simple, slightly mediocre GUI text editor-which might be what you’re looking for in some cases-but do note that most people’s command-line text editor setups are generally more advanced than it. Not only that it can be used to compile programs directly, it's a bit more than just a basic editor. It has tabs, syntax highlighting, plugins, great line bookmarks, a function/symbol sidebar, autocomplete, multiline edit, color schemes, powerful search/replace and a sound way to wrap long lines. Via plugins, it has a minimap, it can go directly to functions (ctrl + click on the function call), has a git integration (showing added/deleted lines not commited yet), highlight of the current variable, pretty print xml and much more stuff I do not use, like a workplace. It's no nano (I use and like nano).
pamparosendo 6y ago
I've been using Geany since I moved to Linux, is the fastest loading editor I've found. Great editor!
- mrtweetyhack 6y ago
  Scite?
laurentdc 6y ago
Red Hat 5, Gnome 2.6 and Geany was the standard at my uni for C/C++ firmware dev. Good times :)
bityard 6y ago
A quick lesson about tone and documentation. I'm always on the lookout for a good lightweight code editor to try out. I looked into Geany once and was excited to see that it had a Vim plugin. Unfortunately, reading the docs for it turned me away from it very quickly. The first thing the author of the Vim plugin for Geany says in the FAQ is that plugin is written by a guy who doesn't use Vim. Which sounds a little strange but I kept reading. Later in the FAQ, he implies that the plugin sucks, Vim sucks, and that he only wrote it to quell the "constant whining of Vim users." Needless to say, I will not be trying (let alone using) Geany as long as the prevailing attitude of the author of one of the plugins I _would_ use the most holds users in this level of sheer disdain.
- notRobot 6y ago
  Sure, but that's no fault of the Geany devs, only of one plugin author. Seems unfair to judge an IDE based on the documentation for a volunteer-written plugin that you haven't even tried. Edit: Also, while the dev admits that they don't use vim, they also say that they enjoy working on the plugin and repeatedly ask users to submit bug reports so that they can patch the plugin. They're also really open to patches and contributions. IMO, this is a perfect example of the true FOSS spirit. I think you're being unjustly harsh: https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode-suck-so-much https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode-suck-s...
  - jachee 6y ago
    Counterintuitively, a dev supporting a feature about which they care, but without any particular zealous dedication may well produce a more universally appealing product for its audience.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > A quick lesson about tone and documentation. Seems more of a lesson of missing the forest for the trees, because a couple of trees at the edge of the forest gave a dirty look.
- amelius 6y ago
  > I looked into Geany once and was excited to see that it had a Vim plugin. Why would anyone want an editor with a "Vim plugin"? Why not simply use Vim?
wackget 6y ago
Just tried it on Windows; unfortunately the lack of native GUI is a huge turn-off for me. Software-drawn GUIs always stick out like a sore thumb and look/feel clunky; it's the same reason I hate using anything built with Java as everything always feels so emulated. Also resizing Geany's window was incredibly laggy as the interface was re-drawn.
- reeeeee 6y ago
  I don't agree on the "Everything written in Java feels emulated" part. Have you tried IntelliJ? It is completely written in Java and looks and feels as if it is using native GUI (alhough it indeed isn't).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Have you tried it on macOS?
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    It's better than some older Java GUIs but still really doesn't feel native.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Geany is "native" on Linux, FWIW.
jbverschoor 6y ago
I use vscode for programming, but I went back to sublime for jotting down notes.
tantalor 6y ago
"Flyweight"?
- jagger27 6y ago
  It's a boxing term.
  - stolen_biscuit 6y ago
    More specifically it's the lightest weight class in boxing. Lightweight is actually about bang in the middle of typical weight classes
  - cpfohl 6y ago
    It's also a classic design pattern...
agentultra 6y ago
errichto [0] recommends this IDE/editor for competitive programming. Cross-platform and lightweight (as in memory) is a nice feature to have, especially if you want to get going really fast. Great for beginners too! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg
pyuser583 6y ago
Didn’t development stop on this?
- bachmeier 6y ago
  Last commit was 11 days ago. That's probably a dead project in the Javascript world, but I'd say it's still active.
kiney 6y ago
Geany is my favourite editor for many years. Blazingly fast and resource friendly. Has most features I need but not bloated... Only thing I'm missing is support for some newer languages (hcl/terraform comes do mind).
givan 6y ago
https://codelite.org/ https://codelite.org/ is another powerful IDE with low memory footprint compared to modern IDEs and with more features like workspace support.
ausjke 6y ago
Used to be good, I used a lot in the past, nowadays I use vim for everything(even after I purchased jetbrain whole bundle for years). Geany is not improved fast enough these days, e.g. debugger was broken, markdown support is not as good, etc. In the core, geany uses scintilla(which is what is used by Notepad++), its capability is restricted by whatever scintilla provides.
mintyc 6y ago
Geany was a useful tool a while back, but no longer is packaged for centos and lost its key selling point for me which was a decent GDB plugin debugger at a time where there weren't too many other UIs for GDB. I'm not so bothered about lightweight as I need horsepower to build my projects anyway. The world has moved on from hand scripted build commands. (for better or worse).
_ZeD_ 6y ago
still, I always preferred kate[0] (I still use it everyday, even on windows 10) and kdevelop[1] (it had type guessing for python since 2011![2]) [0] https://kate-editor.org/ https://kate-editor.org/ [1] https://www.kdevelop.org/ https://www.kdevelop.org/ [2] http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument-type-guessing/ http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument-ty...
feralsky 6y ago
Whenever I am in Linux, I use Geany mostly as text-editor.
trefil 6y ago
I wish I could use Geany, but I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy. For example, there is no way to just open a directory in Geany (the same way as in VS Code and Sublime Text) without creating a project file.
- app4soft 6y ago
  > I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy Could you report issues to Geany devs?
Kenji 6y ago
Last time I used Geany, the laptop fan spun up like crazy and my battery drained like it's nobody's business. I quickly stopped using it.
oblib 6y ago
I've had Geany on my Mac since I found it while looking for an editor for the Raspberry Pi. They include in their disk image now. I still use BBEdit but Geany is the closest thing I've found to it that will run on a RPi. It's been a long time since I've reviewed what's out there now though.
ruffrey 6y ago
I used this over a decade ago, and it was wonderful, a lot like VSCode or Atom, but without debug support and fewer plugins.
pachico 6y ago
One of the first thing I install every time I install a OS. I've been using it as default light notepad since I saw the light, I think. Split screen plugin is probably my favourite.
nightowl_games 6y ago
What are ya'lls thoughts on jucipp vs kdevelop vs vscode vs sublime text for c++ development? I've been using VSCode (& Codium on my linux machine) for c++ dev. I have the debugger and build tasks all set up and feel happy about that. Wouldn't mind having something a bit more reliable. I get this weird bug in VSCode where CTRL+P doesnt index all the files in the project. I have to manually navigate to the file, open it, and then CTRL+P can find it. I usually end up working with both Sublime Text and VS Code open. Sublime for code reading, VS Code for code writing. I still feel like Sublime just dropped the ball with poor plugin support and thats what gave VS Code its edge...
- ridiculous_fish 6y ago
  C++ is hard to do well from a plugin because of its complexity. For example, jump-to-definition requires resolving complex overloading rules. I have had better luck with IDEs that treat C++ as first class: CLion, VC++, Xcode.
zoomablemind 6y ago
Not sure how important it is to emphasize IDE part, but it is lightweight for sure. It's a capable editor. GTK based, which means on Windows the UX is not native. Still, it can be installed stand alone, GTK is packaged in. It's not wise that they omitted including most of the plugins on Windows, as it kills its main selling point. Noone is going to bother to build plugins while on Windows. I hope it was just a recent packaging glitch, as MacOS version comes with all plugins built along, which you can enable on demand. It's a nice altenative for quick exploratory work on some unknown codebases, as Geany extracts/indexes tags and allows one to jump to function defs, vars and such. However you need to have the relevant files already opened, otherwise you need to resort to Find in files to locate where function/ symbol is defined. This may be tedious in heavily structured projects. That's where an actual IDE excells. But it works! It's a nice tool to have in a portable toolbox... However, looking through its GitHub pages looks like the developers are tired. By the way, on Windows a nice lightweight alternative is `notepad2-mod`, also Scintilla based, needs no installation, native UI (a little bit too verbose menus).
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Ctrl+click is a shortcut to find defs although they need to be opened. Setting up a project with the file sidebar available makes it easier.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Love geany, it does everything I want and nothing I don’t, fast. FLOSS, low system requirements, and respects your privacy. Has project, terminal, and vcs support, rectangular selections as well. Lots of functionality is in plugins, such as highlight word and close brackets/quotes, xml formatters I need for work, etc. I often pair it with micro for consistent key bindings in the terminal if not geany itself over sshfs.
zoom6628 6y ago
I’ve been using Geany for very long time as my go to casual editor for any type of text. I can install on all my platforms, all my OS, it’s fast and doesn’t gag on huge log files. Same experience in all platforms which is why it’s one of first installed tools. I’m not a prof dev but at home on macOS, pi, beagle, arduino, Win10 the sheer time saving of having something work same across platforms for projects I get to only when work, family, time allows makes it a winner. When in full on coding mode I prefer vi, rest of the time use Geany. Have tried regularly most other IDEs and text editors and none as fast, reliable, easy to install and use as Geany. It’s perfect for me. YMMV.
- bibinou 6y ago
  The lib it’s based on is called Scintilla. It is a gem.
robochat42 6y ago
I use Geany every day, I like how fast it is and that it has highlight of all occurrences of the current variable. I'm a bit disappointed that it hasn't implemented any of the language server protocol (LSP). I think that would be a fast way to improve the intelligence of it's autocomplete for many languages.
yummypaint 6y ago
Geany is great. Never crashes when editing files mounted over ssh. Ive has stability problems with other programs when the connection gets flaky, but geany never needs a restart and immediately pops up a notification when the mount is lost. One click in nemo to reconnect, one click in geany to reload the file, and everything is back as it was. It certainly beats running vi in a remote terminal and dealing with disconnects.

154 points by notRobot 6y ago

> Build system to compile and execute your code How does a text editor also act as a build system? Do they mean dependencies are automatically discovered and compiled? Or do they mean it integrates with a makefile where you still need to specify the dependencies and the text editor will automatically run it when files change?

mpol 6y ago
You create a Project in Geany. It will then integrate with `make`, so when you click `build` it will run make for you. Myself I don't use this feature, I mostly use PHP code. I am very happy with Geany as a lightweight IDE or texteditor and have been using it for years.
david_draco 6y ago
You press F8 or F9 and it runs a command, and shows you the output.
saagarjha 6y ago
You can customize Geany to run a command to compile your code; output will show up in a status panel. Similarly you can have a command to run your program, either in a new xterm or the built-in terminal.

squid_demon 6y ago

If you are looking for a lighter than flyweight editor check out https://github.com/rxi/lite https://github.com/rxi/lite

app4soft 6y ago
Cute! Is it possible to use on Android in companion with Termux app?

dragonsh 6y ago

I have used it as IDE on Linux for Python development along with vi before moving to emacs. It was my choice as it was small lightweight and could open large csv and xml. After that did not follow it, good to see it’s been constantly updated and developed.

morganvachon 6y ago

I use it as an advanced text editor on any Linux or BSD workstation I use. I'm not a developer so most of the IDE type stuff goes unused, but I do like having something as powerful as Notepad++ on Windows without resorting to cumbersome editors like Atom or VSCode. An alternative for people like me is SciTE. https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

JNRowe 6y ago
Perhaps you're aware, and I missed the nuance... but, geany uses the scintilla engine as its editor component¹. I was once a pretty heavy SciTE user, and it surprises me how often you can spot it in other tools when shoulder surfing or watching live demos. 1. https://github.com/geany/geany/tree/master/scintilla https://github.com/geany/geany/tree/master/scintilla
- morganvachon 6y ago
  I am aware. :-) In fact, I used SciTE for a long time until discovering Geany via Crunchbang Linux, it was the default text editor in that distro. I found I liked its look-and-feel better than SciTE so I switched.
aspyct 6y ago
It's a matter of perspective I guess. Where I'm from, VSCode is considered lightweight. Cumbersome would describe NetBeans and Eclipse in my mind.
- sigzero 6y ago
  I am not sure why VSCode is just as slow as the others you mentioned. I have them all installed.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  If it takes more than a second to load a text editor (or even a light IDE) I have no use for it. It's not just slow to load, it's also cumbersome to use compared to my preferred tools. Even on my old Core 2 Quad with a spinning hard drive, Geany loads in a split second with several tabs already queued up. As you said, perhaps it's perspective, but even on my latest build (Ryzen 3600/RX5600XT/NVMe SSD) VSCode is agonizing compared to Notepad++ on Windows and Geany on Linux.

rickspencer3 6y ago

I use Geany as a code editor on my rpi hobby projects. The editor has been around long enough that it is reasonably fast on under powered hardware. I really appreciate having the option.

jennasys 6y ago
The RPi is the only place I still use it, but on that platform it works great. For Python programming on the RPi, Thonny is actually a bit better though.

victorbstan 6y ago

So we have: Vim, Emacs, BBEdit, textmate, notepad++, SublimeText, Atom, Visual Code, Geany... am I missing any?

adrianN 6y ago
ed is the standard editor.
- sgt 6y ago
  ed is also relevant if you find yourself on an old Sun box with a corrupted /usr volume. In order to rescue the system you need an editor, and ed always lived in /bin. This happened to me a few years ago (2001 I think).
reddotX 6y ago
micro https://micro-editor.github.io/ https://micro-editor.github.io/
- efrecon 6y ago
  micro is really good! It installs quickly and provides for just the minimal set of features to be used as a goto editor for small tasks at the terminal.
markstos 6y ago
Yes, most of them.
saagarjha 6y ago
Nano.
hoistbypetard 6y ago
joe, pico, nano, elvis, jedit, acme, gedit, kedit... and those are just the ones that popped into my head within a few seconds. There are legions more.
627467 6y ago

notRobot 6y ago

Thread from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128

interfixus 6y ago

My editor and IDE of choice for the last 15 years or so. I keep rushing out and trying newfangled wonderware for the alleged features it will offer me and without which I cannot be supposed to live. And I keep, regular as clockwork, coming back to sane and solid Geany with its speed, straightforwardness, sanity, discoverability, and allround just-so convenience.

dingdingdang 6y ago
Agree, for the last couple of years Geany has been my primary dev environment on Linux after migrating off Windows and Notepad++, and I'm super productive on it, very stable and fast.

timw4mail 6y ago

Geany is probably the lightest IDE that works well with Rust. If you just basically want an editor with shortcuts to run terminal commands, it's a great solution.

tomrod 6y ago
I didn't realize it would integrate with Rust Back to geany!

maeln 6y ago

I remember Geany, it was the first "IDE" I ever used :) . I really like that the "build system" was pretty much just scripts that you could do yourself, it made it pretty much usable for any workflow easily. Granted, you could not customize it and integrate everything as much as VS Code, Atom and the likes, but it is doing its job and run extremely good on very old computer.

saagarjha 6y ago

I remember using Geany throughout high school for our Java/AP Computer Science classes, where it was the editor you were required to use. While I had it customized as much as the system would allow me, calling it an “IDE” is being a bit generous: my Sublime Text can do much, much more than Geany possibly could, and I’m not sure I would call even that an IDE. Geany is basically just a simple, slightly mediocre GUI text editor-which might be what you’re looking for in some cases-but do note that most people’s command-line text editor setups are generally more advanced than it. (If I could compare it to an editor, I’d say it’s just slightly more advanced than nano.)

pszndr 6y ago
It can write, build and debug code. It's an IDE.
- capableweb 6y ago
  And just like Sublime, Geany also have an API that third-parties can use for developing their own plugins/extensions. Since Geany is open source, might have even more plugins than Sublime, although I doubt that, Sublime has been way more popular than Geany for as long as I can remember.
- hknapp 6y ago
  Do you happen to know how to debug C++ or even just C, w/ Geany?
onli 6y ago
> Geany is basically just a simple, slightly mediocre GUI text editor-which might be what you’re looking for in some cases-but do note that most people’s command-line text editor setups are generally more advanced than it. Not only that it can be used to compile programs directly, it's a bit more than just a basic editor. It has tabs, syntax highlighting, plugins, great line bookmarks, a function/symbol sidebar, autocomplete, multiline edit, color schemes, powerful search/replace and a sound way to wrap long lines. Via plugins, it has a minimap, it can go directly to functions (ctrl + click on the function call), has a git integration (showing added/deleted lines not commited yet), highlight of the current variable, pretty print xml and much more stuff I do not use, like a workplace. It's no nano (I use and like nano).

pamparosendo 6y ago

I've been using Geany since I moved to Linux, is the fastest loading editor I've found. Great editor!

mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Scite?

laurentdc 6y ago

Red Hat 5, Gnome 2.6 and Geany was the standard at my uni for C/C++ firmware dev. Good times :)

bityard 6y ago

A quick lesson about tone and documentation. I'm always on the lookout for a good lightweight code editor to try out. I looked into Geany once and was excited to see that it had a Vim plugin. Unfortunately, reading the docs for it turned me away from it very quickly. The first thing the author of the Vim plugin for Geany says in the FAQ is that plugin is written by a guy who doesn't use Vim. Which sounds a little strange but I kept reading. Later in the FAQ, he implies that the plugin sucks, Vim sucks, and that he only wrote it to quell the "constant whining of Vim users." Needless to say, I will not be trying (let alone using) Geany as long as the prevailing attitude of the author of one of the plugins I _would_ use the most holds users in this level of sheer disdain.

notRobot 6y ago
Sure, but that's no fault of the Geany devs, only of one plugin author. Seems unfair to judge an IDE based on the documentation for a volunteer-written plugin that you haven't even tried. Edit: Also, while the dev admits that they don't use vim, they also say that they enjoy working on the plugin and repeatedly ask users to submit bug reports so that they can patch the plugin. They're also really open to patches and contributions. IMO, this is a perfect example of the true FOSS spirit. I think you're being unjustly harsh: https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode-suck-so-much https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode-suck-s...
- jachee 6y ago
  Counterintuitively, a dev supporting a feature about which they care, but without any particular zealous dedication may well produce a more universally appealing product for its audience.
stronglikedan 6y ago
> A quick lesson about tone and documentation. Seems more of a lesson of missing the forest for the trees, because a couple of trees at the edge of the forest gave a dirty look.
amelius 6y ago
> I looked into Geany once and was excited to see that it had a Vim plugin. Why would anyone want an editor with a "Vim plugin"? Why not simply use Vim?

wackget 6y ago

Just tried it on Windows; unfortunately the lack of native GUI is a huge turn-off for me. Software-drawn GUIs always stick out like a sore thumb and look/feel clunky; it's the same reason I hate using anything built with Java as everything always feels so emulated. Also resizing Geany's window was incredibly laggy as the interface was re-drawn.

reeeeee 6y ago
I don't agree on the "Everything written in Java feels emulated" part. Have you tried IntelliJ? It is completely written in Java and looks and feels as if it is using native GUI (alhough it indeed isn't).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Have you tried it on macOS?
- ubercow13 6y ago
  It's better than some older Java GUIs but still really doesn't feel native.
saagarjha 6y ago
Geany is "native" on Linux, FWIW.

jbverschoor 6y ago

I use vscode for programming, but I went back to sublime for jotting down notes.

tantalor 6y ago

"Flyweight"?

jagger27 6y ago
It's a boxing term.
- stolen_biscuit 6y ago
  More specifically it's the lightest weight class in boxing. Lightweight is actually about bang in the middle of typical weight classes
- cpfohl 6y ago
  It's also a classic design pattern...

agentultra 6y ago

errichto [0] recommends this IDE/editor for competitive programming. Cross-platform and lightweight (as in memory) is a nice feature to have, especially if you want to get going really fast. Great for beginners too! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg

pyuser583 6y ago

Didn’t development stop on this?

bachmeier 6y ago
Last commit was 11 days ago. That's probably a dead project in the Javascript world, but I'd say it's still active.

kiney 6y ago

Geany is my favourite editor for many years. Blazingly fast and resource friendly. Has most features I need but not bloated... Only thing I'm missing is support for some newer languages (hcl/terraform comes do mind).

givan 6y ago

https://codelite.org/ https://codelite.org/ is another powerful IDE with low memory footprint compared to modern IDEs and with more features like workspace support.

ausjke 6y ago

Used to be good, I used a lot in the past, nowadays I use vim for everything(even after I purchased jetbrain whole bundle for years). Geany is not improved fast enough these days, e.g. debugger was broken, markdown support is not as good, etc. In the core, geany uses scintilla(which is what is used by Notepad++), its capability is restricted by whatever scintilla provides.

mintyc 6y ago

Geany was a useful tool a while back, but no longer is packaged for centos and lost its key selling point for me which was a decent GDB plugin debugger at a time where there weren't too many other UIs for GDB. I'm not so bothered about lightweight as I need horsepower to build my projects anyway. The world has moved on from hand scripted build commands. (for better or worse).

_ZeD_ 6y ago

still, I always preferred kate[0] (I still use it everyday, even on windows 10) and kdevelop[1] (it had type guessing for python since 2011![2]) [0] https://kate-editor.org/ https://kate-editor.org/ [1] https://www.kdevelop.org/ https://www.kdevelop.org/ [2] http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument-type-guessing/ http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument-ty...

feralsky 6y ago

Whenever I am in Linux, I use Geany mostly as text-editor.

trefil 6y ago

I wish I could use Geany, but I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy. For example, there is no way to just open a directory in Geany (the same way as in VS Code and Sublime Text) without creating a project file.

app4soft 6y ago
> I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy Could you report issues to Geany devs?

Kenji 6y ago

Last time I used Geany, the laptop fan spun up like crazy and my battery drained like it's nobody's business. I quickly stopped using it.

oblib 6y ago

I've had Geany on my Mac since I found it while looking for an editor for the Raspberry Pi. They include in their disk image now. I still use BBEdit but Geany is the closest thing I've found to it that will run on a RPi. It's been a long time since I've reviewed what's out there now though.

ruffrey 6y ago

I used this over a decade ago, and it was wonderful, a lot like VSCode or Atom, but without debug support and fewer plugins.

pachico 6y ago

One of the first thing I install every time I install a OS. I've been using it as default light notepad since I saw the light, I think. Split screen plugin is probably my favourite.

nightowl_games 6y ago

What are ya'lls thoughts on jucipp vs kdevelop vs vscode vs sublime text for c++ development? I've been using VSCode (& Codium on my linux machine) for c++ dev. I have the debugger and build tasks all set up and feel happy about that. Wouldn't mind having something a bit more reliable. I get this weird bug in VSCode where CTRL+P doesnt index all the files in the project. I have to manually navigate to the file, open it, and then CTRL+P can find it. I usually end up working with both Sublime Text and VS Code open. Sublime for code reading, VS Code for code writing. I still feel like Sublime just dropped the ball with poor plugin support and thats what gave VS Code its edge...

ridiculous_fish 6y ago
C++ is hard to do well from a plugin because of its complexity. For example, jump-to-definition requires resolving complex overloading rules. I have had better luck with IDEs that treat C++ as first class: CLion, VC++, Xcode.

zoomablemind 6y ago

Not sure how important it is to emphasize IDE part, but it is lightweight for sure. It's a capable editor. GTK based, which means on Windows the UX is not native. Still, it can be installed stand alone, GTK is packaged in. It's not wise that they omitted including most of the plugins on Windows, as it kills its main selling point. Noone is going to bother to build plugins while on Windows. I hope it was just a recent packaging glitch, as MacOS version comes with all plugins built along, which you can enable on demand. It's a nice altenative for quick exploratory work on some unknown codebases, as Geany extracts/indexes tags and allows one to jump to function defs, vars and such. However you need to have the relevant files already opened, otherwise you need to resort to Find in files to locate where function/ symbol is defined. This may be tedious in heavily structured projects. That's where an actual IDE excells. But it works! It's a nice tool to have in a portable toolbox... However, looking through its GitHub pages looks like the developers are tired. By the way, on Windows a nice lightweight alternative is `notepad2-mod`, also Scintilla based, needs no installation, native UI (a little bit too verbose menus).

mixmastamyk 6y ago
Ctrl+click is a shortcut to find defs although they need to be opened. Setting up a project with the file sidebar available makes it easier.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Love geany, it does everything I want and nothing I don’t, fast. FLOSS, low system requirements, and respects your privacy. Has project, terminal, and vcs support, rectangular selections as well. Lots of functionality is in plugins, such as highlight word and close brackets/quotes, xml formatters I need for work, etc. I often pair it with micro for consistent key bindings in the terminal if not geany itself over sshfs.

zoom6628 6y ago

I’ve been using Geany for very long time as my go to casual editor for any type of text. I can install on all my platforms, all my OS, it’s fast and doesn’t gag on huge log files. Same experience in all platforms which is why it’s one of first installed tools. I’m not a prof dev but at home on macOS, pi, beagle, arduino, Win10 the sheer time saving of having something work same across platforms for projects I get to only when work, family, time allows makes it a winner. When in full on coding mode I prefer vi, rest of the time use Geany. Have tried regularly most other IDEs and text editors and none as fast, reliable, easy to install and use as Geany. It’s perfect for me. YMMV.

bibinou 6y ago
The lib it’s based on is called Scintilla. It is a gem.

robochat42 6y ago

I use Geany every day, I like how fast it is and that it has highlight of all occurrences of the current variable. I'm a bit disappointed that it hasn't implemented any of the language server protocol (LSP). I think that would be a fast way to improve the intelligence of it's autocomplete for many languages.

yummypaint 6y ago

Geany is great. Never crashes when editing files mounted over ssh. Ive has stability problems with other programs when the connection gets flaky, but geany never needs a restart and immediately pops up a notification when the mount is lost. One click in nemo to reconnect, one click in geany to reload the file, and everything is back as it was. It certainly beats running vi in a remote terminal and dealing with disconnects.