Every time I start Eclipse it tries to refresh an entire project, which translates to more than 10 minutes of wait time, not to mention the ridiculous amount of memory it wo
According to this thread, no:
For more recent versions of Eclipse, as detailed in Eclipse help page, you can use Resource filters (also initially mentioned below by pcoucke)
Resource filters can be created, edited and removed in the
File > Properties > Resource > Resources Filtersproperty page for a project or folder resource.Resource filters only apply to files and/or folders that are implicitly included in the workspace by the refresh operation
An "Exclude" resource filter prevent all files and/or folders that match the filter condition to be included in the workspace during the refresh operation.
I mentioned an example in "How to have .git folders ignored by Eclipse projects"