When I create a new project in Aptana/Eclipse I have to specify that my project should not “build automatically” to avoid this apparently unneeded behavior. If this was a compiled language I would understand, but since it’s PHP why does Aptana need to build, and what is it doing that it takes so long?
This is especially annoying when I do something like launch a PHP file on the test server and am treated to a never ending status bar as the IDE runs through every file in my jQuery UI and CKEditor libraries, where files are quite numerous.
Build means more than just “compile.” For example, it might be validating XML, HTML, JavaScript, etc. files; it can mean copying files to a build output location (it does that for Java projects, but I don’t do PHP so I’m not sure if that’s part of the PHP build).
To find out a little bit more about what it’s doing, open the Project’s Properties and check out the Builders section; also see if there’s a Validation or XML or other sections there that might allow you to configure what happens during a build. Bottom line, a build shouldn’t take more than a few seconds unless something is wrong.