netbeans optimize disk usage

Is there some way to optimize the Netbeans IDE for PHP (and Symfony)? It's very good with code hinting, debugging etc, but the downside is that while writing code, the disk works intensively all the time which is disturbing and besides the editor开发者_开发知识库 slows down slightly because of the code hinting. I have 8GB memory, so it would be quite sufficient for all Netbeans needs. I mean, is it possible to somehow limit the disk usage but without limiting the code hinting? E,g, make it load all code hints to memory.

Here is a workaround which solves the problematic symptoms, i.e. the NetBeans editor now works without small delays from code hinting and the disk is quiet. I installed RAMDisk with 500MB capacity. Then I moved the .netbeans folder with user files to this RAMDisk, as described in wiki.netbeans.org/FaqWhatIsUserdir. Just FYI, moving the project folder itself made no difference, only .netbeans folder was necessary to move.

Try to deactivate the Local History plugin, maybe it is causing the high disk usage. (Be careful if you don't have any vcs)

Although I've never have a problem with Netbeans and disk usage, maybe your disk is broke.

Kudos to @camcam for answering his own question and posting the RAM disk suggestion. In case there are other Mac users out there who want to do this on a Mac, here are instructions:

1) Create a 500MB RAM disk:

diskutil erasevolume HFS+ 'NetBeansRAMDisk' `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://1048576`

2) Locate the NetBeans application in the Finder, control-click on it and select "Show Package Contents"

3) Add this line to Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf: netbeans_default_cachedir="/Volumes/NetBeansRAMDisk"

(Note: the cachedir option was added in NetBeans 7.1.)

For more info, see:

• http://bogner.sh/2012/12/os-x-create-a-ram-disk-the-easy-way/
• http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqAlternateUserdir

I have been using NetBeans since version 3.x I have never seen it access the disk all the time. I have regularly ~20 projects open with ~350.000 LOC

You should first make sure it's actually NetBeans that does the disk access (on Windows you can do this with ProcessExplorer, don't know about Linux).

If it's really NetBeans, you could try to give it more memory to cache more data in memory. See the NetBeans FAQ for details

And of course make sure your system is not swapping because you have too many programs open (even though it's very unlikely with 8GB RAM but not unseen...).

If you already configured NetBeans to use more memory, maybe you gave it too much and that's why the system is swapping (just a thought).

Is your project stored in Subversion? Do you use TortoiseSVN? With he default installation TortoiseSVN has a background process that caches information about the status of your versioned files. I have seen that scanning the whole harddisk in the background...