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On the NetBeans - Preferences menu: "Reuse Output Tabs from Finished Processes". It would be very helpful if one could reuse "Compile" tabs (these are rarely useful to save) but not "Run" tabs as these are frequently useful to save.
The issue is determining whether a call to an Ant target was in fact a compilation or a run. Ant makes no distinction, this is purely conventional. The only heuristic I can think of is to assume that any Ant process which opened the input field at any point is a "run".
would it be possible to have an option to reuse output tabs on a per project basis? say I want to build several projects more or less simultaneously, but I want to keep the results of the latest build for each even if one project started its build after some other project was finished.
Would be possible.
Another solution could perhaps be to have the possibility to tag individual tabs to be spared from reuse. A sort of "Keep this tab" button (or right-click option). The user would then either untag that tab or simply close it when it is no longer of interest.
Yes, "pinning" output tabs has been discussed. I do not remember if there is an issue number for this.
the discussion started due to issue http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=208638 and is documented at http://wiki.netbeans.org/UEXTabReuse AFAIK we did not reach generally agreed and implementable state yet.
This old bug may not be relevant anymore. If you can still reproduce it in 8.2 development builds please reopen this issue. Thanks for your cooperation, NetBeans IDE 8.2 Release Boss