Geany for macOS

Geany for macOS is a project that contains all the necessary configuration files, themes, scripts and instructions to create the Geany app bundle and a dmg installer image for macOS.

Binaries

The macOS binaries can be downloaded from the Geany Releases page:

https://www.geany.org/Download/Releases

Configuration

In addition to standard Geany configuration, the macOS bundle creates its own configuration file under ~/.config/geany/geany_mac.conf upon first start. In this configuration file it is for instance possible to override the used theme (light/dark) when autodetection based on system macOS theme is not desired.

Files and Directories

A brief description of the contents of the project directory:

Directories

• Launcher: A binary launcher which is used to set up environment variables to run Geany.
• Prof-Gnome: Prof-Gnome 3.6 GTK 3 Theme with minor modifications
• Papirus, Papirus-Dark: Papirus GTK 3 icon theme with lots of unneeded icons removed to save space.
• macos-icon-design: design file for macOS Geany icon.
• iconbuilder.iconset: source Geany icons for the bundle.
• modulesets-stable, patches: copy of the modulesets-stable and patches directory from the gtk-osx project containing dependency specifications. Since the upstram project is sometimes in an unstable state, this allows us to make a snapshot of a working configuration for our build.
• geany_patches: various patches fixing dependencies to enable bundling.
• utils: various utility scripts.

Configuration files

• Info.plist: macOS application configuration file containing some basic information such as application name, version, etc. but also additional configuration including file types the application can open.
• geany.bundle: configuration file describing the contents of the app bundle.
• geany.entitlements: runtime hardening entitlements file.
• geany.modules: JHBuild modules file with Geany dependencies.
• settings.ini: default theme configuration file for GTK 3.

Scripts

• bundle.sh: script creating the app bundle.
• create_dmg.sh: script calling create-dmg to create the dmg installer image.
• notarize.sh: script for notarizing the dmg using Apple notary service.
• sign.sh: script signing the app bundle.

General Instructions

For more general instructions about building and bundling macOS applications please visit

• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk-osx/
• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk-mac-bundler/

The HOWTO below contains just the portions necessary/relevant for building and bundling Geany.

Prerequisities

• macOS
• Xcode and command-line tools

Building

To create the bundle, you need to first install JHBuild and GTK as described below.

1. Create a new account for jhbuild (not necessary but this makes sure jhbuild does not interfere with some other command-line tools installed on your system).

2. Optionally, when cross-compiling x86_64 binaries on an ARM64 Apple computer, run

   env /usr/bin/arch -x86_64 /bin/zsh --login
   

   to create a x86_64 shell. All the compilation steps below have to be executed in this shell.

3. Depending on the used shell, add the following lines

   export PATH=$PATH:"$HOME/.new_local/bin"
   export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
   export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   

   either to your .zprofile or .bash_profile to make sure these variables are defined and restart your shell.

4. Get gtk-osx-setup.sh by

   curl -L -o gtk-osx-setup.sh https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk-osx/raw/master/gtk-osx-setup.sh
   

   and run it:

   bash gtk-osx-setup.sh
   

5. Add the following lines to ~/.config/jhbuildrc-custom:

   setup_sdk(target="11", architectures=["arm64"])
   #setup_sdk(target="10.15", architectures=["x86_64"])
   setup_release()  # enables optimizations
   

   With this settings, the build creates an ARM64 binary that works on macOS 11 and later. Instead of arm64 you can also specify x86_64 to produce binaries for 64-bit Intel processors. Also, when cross-compiling x86_64 binaries, set

   default_toolchain = "stable-x86_64-apple-darwin"
   

   inside .new_local/settings.toml so rust downloads x86_64 library versions.

6. Install GTK and all of its dependencies by running the following command inside the geany-osx directory:

   jhbuild bootstrap-gtk-osx && jhbuild build meta-gtk-osx-bootstrap meta-gtk-osx-gtk3
   

   The upstream project is sometimes in an unstable state and fails to build; if this happens, you can use our snapshot of modulesets which was used to build the last release of Geany:

   jhbuild bootstrap-gtk-osx && jhbuild -m "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geany/geany-osx/master/modulesets-stable/gtk-osx.modules" build meta-gtk-osx-bootstrap meta-gtk-osx-gtk3
   

7. To build Geany, plugins and all of their dependencies, run one of the following commands inside the geany-osx directory depending on whether to use Geany sources from the latest release tarball or current git master:

   • tarball

      jhbuild -m `pwd`/geany.modules build geany-bundle-release
     

   • git master

      jhbuild -m `pwd`/geany.modules build geany-bundle-git
     

Bundling

1. To build the launcher binary, run

   xcodebuild ARCHS=`uname -m` -project Launcher/geany/geany.xcodeproj clean build
   

   inside the geany-osx directory.

2. Inside the geany-osx directory run the following command to create the app bundle:

   jhbuild run ./bundle.sh
   

3. Optionally, if you have a development account at Apple and want to sign the resulting bundle, get the list of signing identities by

   security find-identity -p codesigning
   

   and use the whole string within apostrophes which contains "Developer ID Application: ..." in the following command:

   export SIGN_CERTIFICATE="Developer ID Application: ..."
   

   Then, run

   ./sign.sh
   

Distribution

1. Get the create-dmg script from

   https://github.com/andreyvit/create-dmg.git

   and put it to your $PATH.

2. Create the dmg installation image by calling

   ./create_dmg.sh
   

   from within the geany-osx directory. If the SIGN_CERTIFICATE variable is defined (see above), the image gets signed by the specified certificate.

3. Optionally, to get the image notarized by Apple notary service, run

   ./notarize.sh <dmg_file> <apple_id>
   

   where <dmg_file> is the dmg file generated above and <apple_id> is the Apple ID used for your developer account. The script then prompts for an app-specific password generated for your Apple ID.

Maintenance

This section describes some maintenance-related activities which do not have to be performed during normal bundle/installer creation:

• To get the Info.plist file associations in sync with filetype_extensions.conf, copy the filetype extension portion from filetype_extensions.conf to the marked place in utils/plist_filetypes.py and run the script. Copy the output of the script to the marked place in Info.plist.

• Before the release, update the Geany version and copyright years inside Info.plist and create_dmg.sh. Also update the -release targets in geany.modules file to point to the new release. Dependencies inside geany.modules can also be updated to newer versions.

• Copy modulesets-stable from gtk-osx into this project to get the latest dependencies (if it builds) and possibly modify it (if something isn't working).

• To make sure nothing is left from the previous build when making a new release, run

  rm -rf .new_local .local Source gtk .cache/jhbuild
  

---

Jiri Techet, 2025