Maybe one dependency you might consider is shared-mime-info - I use it for the macOS build too. It allows to determine the right icon for a file type based on its mime type. This then works e.g. with the file browser plugin (but the result also depends on the used icon theme if it provides corresponding filetype icons).
Alright, I just added it. But as you know, I can't test it :).
Hmm, I don't see any difference so it can probably be dropped. I think it's because of the Adwaita icon theme which doesn't provide many mime type icons (the theme I use on macOS has many more mime type icons https://github.com/geany/geany-osx/tree/master/Papirus/16x16/mimetypes)
Ok. I think we could still keep it in, maybe it gives other advantages as well.
I think I will finally look for a new Windows maintainer.
I don't think there will be crowds of people wanting to do that ;-)
Don't destroy all my hopes to get out of the Windows hell :)
And until one is found or even if not, the quality of the Windows releases might decrease.
I believe there aren't any major problems though - or any new problems at least. Those various things like problems with file encodings have probably always been there and some things are probably GTK related and nothing we can fix in Geany.
So I think the main issue is to have CI running and being able to make releases (which you could also do using CI or a local docker image if you don't have access to a real Windows machine - I can survive testing the result from time to time ;-)
Actually, right now we *have* to make releases from the CI as I cannot build natively on Windows anymore. And I got it almost running already, will PR it soonish.