I not understand, you mean have some old version of
some distro isn't support GTK+ 3 and them always with
older version of all package - so why Geany need to be
the last in them distro?
Geany need to go forward, and older distro will keep
the old version of Geany same them keep the old
version of GTK+ 2 and not support GTK+ 3 yet.
Geany 1.24 and also Geany 0.21 it realy good software,
but we can't to bog becausw have some older distor.