The difference with opening a terminal or file manager from the desktop, is that this opens it inside the same directory as the file, saving a whole lot of time compared to manually navigating to the same directory.
I knew that the file manager opened in the current file directory, but I didn't think terminal did, which is why I asked.
I'm leaning towards creating a new plugin for this, one I'd also be willing to contribute to geany-plugins. Would you say that this indeed sounds like the best option?
Yes, especially if it is fairly general to "Run Commands".
ATM Geany can run commands:
1. custom commands that get the buffer/selection in their stdin and the buffer/selection is replaced by their stdout, can have 10 IIRC, or 2. run a grep compatible command and show results in the message window, or 3. build commands where the stdout is scanned for errors and shown in the compiler tab, or 4. execute comands that are run in a script in a terminal so their stdout is shown to the user.
All of these wait for completion, AFAIR there is no way to just run commands and forget about them.
So a plugin that allowed commands to be configured that would just be run and forgotten would be useful. If it had a fixed number like custom commands it should be possible to have a keybinding section for the plugin so you could have shortcuts for the commands, fixed because the keybinding GUI doesn't handle variable numbers of entries after loading which is why extra build commands can't have keybindings, only the fixed minimum entries. A single "Run Commands" menu item could be added to tools with the actual commands as a submenu.
Gold star for configuration GUI to define the commands.
Extra points for %c %d type substitutions in commands like build commands do.