@krisjace we have a build option to get a relocatable build of Geany you can move around, see my previous answer on this thread: https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/788#issuecomment-161657310
Also, if it's an important need it might be possible or even easy to add an environment variable for this (or alike) on Linux, as IIUC it works like that on OSX and Windows already, but I'd like to know the advantage over current binary relocation. Also, we *could* provide an easy-ish way of installing in the user's home, like you mentioned installing the .desktop in *~/.local/share/applications*. For that matter, doesn't an install with `--prefix=$HOME/.local/` do the whole trick? I'm not sure *~/.local* is supposed to be used that way but I'd think it would probably work.
Anyway, this thread seemed to be for people trying to run Geany from the source tree when working on it, not really for getting a relocatable build. You might be better off starting a new thread.