Feature: Custom command menu items

[TheDcoder]

Hi, I just thought about this feature though I am sure many others might have come up with the same idea, I could not find a related ticket here so I am posting it for the first time (forgive me if I missed the duplicate).

The basic concept is that there will be a new section in the menu for custom labelled commands, which will execute user-defined commands, with the option of having some wildcard options to replace with the current file's path or parent directory, work directory etc.

I could already think of a few uses for this feature:

1. Show in file manager - xdg-open %s
2. Open terminal - myterminal %w (working directory or file's parent directory)
3. Open file in external program

Hopefully it is not too hard to implement, it may even be implemented as a plugin 😄

P.S I am aware that there is a "Send selection to custom command" but that really isn't the same feature.

[elextr]

You know you can extend the build commands menu? https://wiki.geany.org/howtos/configurebuildmenu

[TheDcoder]

@elextr Nice, but not sure if "Build" is the right menu for this task, the GUI is also limited in the way how it only provides a fixed number of additions.

[elextr]

No its not, read the fine wiki article!

[elextr]

Actually the menu size settings are now in various I think, don't forget to restart Geany though.

[TheDcoder]

@elextr I have glanced the wiki and I am aware that it is possible to add additional options by directly editing the configuration files, but the GUI itself doesn't allow more than 4 independent commands... but I see the complexity with integrating my proposed feature with the existing build commands feature.

[elextr]

As I said above, you can set the number of each type of command with Edit->Preferences->Various build.number_exec_menu_items, build.number_ft_menu_items, and build.number_non_ft_menu_items and restart Geany.

I just set non_ft to 12, restarted and then Build->Set build commands shows 12 slots for independent commands.

[TheDcoder]

I think I found another reason why build commands are not suitable for custom user commands, whenever a command is ran, Geany monitors it and shows a "progress" bar at the bottom of the GUI:

This is a bit distracting when long running programs are started this way. I guess this issue can be solved by making the program fork into another process before exiting, but I am not aware of any common utilities which can do this.

[elextr]

Hmmm, how useful, anyway if build and custom are not suitable "somebody" can indeed make a plugin as you said, spawn_async is in the plugin API.