Developing Using Geany IDE

At Will Hall Online, we’ve recently started using the Geany IDE for Linux, and as there doesn’t seem to have been a great amount written about, it, we thought we’d share some of our first impressions of the program.

First off, it seems to have pretty good support for PHP and Javascript, which forms the bulk of our coding. It’s got some really handy plugins, such as a version control one that allows you to push stuff straight to Git. And it seems to do all of the stuff you would expect from your IDE in terms of indenting, code folding, reminding you of function parameters, with a minimum of fuss.

We’ve also added some custom Drupal code snippets for geany, which allow you to access many of the Drupal API’s functions. These are available on Github at http://github.com/willhallonline/drupal-geany-snippets, go check them out. They save a lot of time previously spent looking up that hook that you just can’t quite remember!

Needless to say, there are plenty of other great IDEs out there for Linux. We’re really keen to find out what other Drupal developers are using and how well it works for them, whether that’s Geany, Eclipse, or trusty old gedit. Leave us a comment below or tweet us at @willhallonline.