# User-defined Tools

## Introduction

You'll sometimes find the built-in functionality provided by Anjuta to be insufficient. In these cases, you might be tempted to either add the feature yourself to the Anjuta codebase or submit a feature request to implement the feature. However, both approaches are likely to be slow and problematic, especially if your tool is a specialized one. In these circumstances, it is advisable to use the Anjuta tools framework instead.

Anjuta provides a powerful framework for defining user-defined tools for extending its functionality. Tools have access to almost all features of the IDE through the use of variables. You can add tools under any menu item, specify input, output and error redirection within the GUI framework and supply command-line parameters to the tool.

The tools plugin has to be enabled to use this feature!

## Tools Examples

This is a simple example how to use the tools plugin to integrate the GNOME ChangeLog generation script.

### The tool editor

The tool editor