Running Geany on Mac OSX

The simplest way I found to run Geany on OSX, while still being somewhat “native” is to use Macports. All of the other stuff I tried (Fink and Homebrew) caused Geany to run in Xorg, which is kinda nasty but this way will use the Quartz backend of GTK+. I'll quickly outline the steps to install it:

• Install MacPorts
• Add this to /opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf:

+no_x11
-x11
+quartz

• Run the following commands:

sudo port install cairo
sudo port install geany
sudo port install gtk2-aurora #optional
sudo port install gtk-chtheme #optional

Note: The gtk2-aurora and gtk-chtheme packages aren't required but they will make Geany look better. After installing, run

gtk-chtheme

and choose gtk2-aurora.

Note: Geany's menu will be inside its main window instead of in the top panel like native applications, so it will feel slightly foreign, but it still works great.

• Then run geany with the following command:

geany --vte-lib=/opt/local/lib/libvte.dylib

Note: Leave out the –vte-lib argument if you don't care about the Terminal in Geany.

Note: The terminal wasn't working for me, but I'm sure it's workable, I just didn't try very hard.

As a bonus, any other GTK+ apps you install with Macports will look at least as good as Geany does when installed this way.