Is there a way to stop NetBeans scanning projects?

Question

I don\'t have much memory on my PC and a pretty weak processor. Although netbeans is by far my favorite IDE it is almost unbearable to use on my present computer because of

Answer 1

For Netbeans 8.*+, the ScanOnDemand plugin from Zeophlite's answer does not work. Use MasterFileSystemSuspend instead, as it is current and works fine on stable releases.

Plugin to control when the NetBeans IDE reacts to changes and when it ignores them. Useful addition to compile on save with additional user actions - by putting the IDE into suspended mode, one can perform (and finish) command line operations and only then turn the IDE on.

The code for the plugin is in main/contrib repository. The plugin can be downloaded from media:Org-netbeans-modules-masterfs-suspend.nbm‎ and installed (Tools/Plugins/Downloaded) into NetBeans 8.0, 8.1, 8.2.

After installation a new icon appears in the toolbar which one can click to suspend the automatic refresh done by the IDE. Very useful when working with Truffle sources in NetBeans 8.2 and newer.

This module is a handy replacement of previous ScanOnDemand module.

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On a personal note, this brought my netbeans memory consumption for general use down from 20gb+ during idle to about 2gb consistently, and provides a good workaround for the scanner constantly hanging and leaking memory, particularly in very large projects or those with a ton of symlinks.