How to stop Intellij from automatically running SBT

Question

I imported an SBT project into into Intellij 13.1.

Whenever I change build.sbt, plugins.sbt, etc., Intellij reruns SBT.

Sometime that is nice, but when I do lot of stuff in the console, and after frequent changes, I have to wait because my IDE locks SBT from running (and SBT is sloooow).

Anyway, can I turn off the automatic SBT run in Intellij. I would prefer to do it myself, from the provided SBT window.

Answer 1

I would leave the autoimport checkbox unchecked when importing a SBT project.

In this way, it doesn't refresh automatically, it must be done by hand.

In order to change it, after it has been imported, you can edit by hand the .idea/sbt.xml file:

<project version="4">   <component name="ScalaSbtSettings">     <option name="linkedExternalProjectsSettings">       <SbtProjectSettings>         <option name="externalProjectPath" value="$PROJECT_DIR$" />         <option name="jdk" value="1.7" />         <option name="resolveClassifiers" value="true" />         <option name="useAutoImport" value="true" />       </SbtProjectSettings>     </option>   </component> </project> 

and change the useAutoImport setting. If necessary, restart IDEA.

UPDATE: Also in the settings page, search for SBT, and there you can enable or disable auto-import of SBT files.

When doing heavy work on a .sbt file, I disable auto-import.

Answer 2

IntelliJ 14.1 now allows you to adjust SBT settings after importing projects.

File > Settings > Build > Build Tools > SBT (Or click the settings button on the SBT projects panel.)

Uncheck "auto-import".

This is the user-friendly equivalent of david.perez's answer.