The text editor gedit is part of the GNOME desktop environment, which I happen to use currently. One really nice feature about this GUI text editor, is the fact it supports Python and C plugins.

So, I thought I’d take my time to share some useful plugins which I’ve been using. Also, below the list, you can find out how to install a plugin.

Embeded Terminal

This is a nice plugin, it gives you a small terminal within gedit. Of cause you could just tab into your terminal, within another window. But it’s nice to have one built in.

External Tools

Very useful plugin, allows you to create a shortcut to an external tool. For instance, if you want to run make, or execute the current source code file, you can do so using the external tools plugin. Simple to setup, and has a few pre-made examples which you can use.

Fullscreen

Have you ever wanted gedit to be fullscreen, or generally code in fullscreen mode. This plugin will be handy for you. You still have all the features of the text editor, but it’s fullscreen and without the window decoration.

Indent Lines

A standard plugin, which comes with gedit itself.

Regex Search and Replace

Very useful, and is an essential for every text editor. Use regular expressions for searching and substitution of text.

Snippets

Another standard plugin, yet one I can’t live without. Makes life so much easier. Snippets allows you to make little auto-complete code snippets. Where, say you type “inc”, it could translate to “#include <$0>” when tab-completed.

Installing a Plugin

Once you have downloaded the plugin you want, extract it. For instance:

tar zxvf plugin-name.tar.gz

Then, `cp` the extracted contents to ~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins/. For me, this directory location didn’t exist, so create it if it doesn’t exist.

Reload gedit, go to Edit -> Preferences, and enable your plugins within the plugin tab.

Extra Plugins

Also, you can get extra official gedit plugins from the Debian / Ubuntu repository.

apt-get install gedit-plugins

Note

External links are only for those plugins which were created by 3rd party.

Happy hacking!