I'm a newbie in DITA and I wonder if I can somehow configure it to build separately just the merged XML and then to just take this XML (without rebuilding it each time) and transform it to FO/PDF? Most of the time I tinker with the output customization (i.e. at the merged-to-FO step) and if I could skip the merging and such it would save me quite a bit of time.
Can I build just the merged XML in DITA OT and then just transform it to FO/PDF?
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Another possibility to improve turn around time would be to make a copy of an existing bookmap to use for development purposes. Within this copy, you could use XML comments to reduce the amount of content that you are producing when you do a build. For example, if chapter 3 contains a representative sample of the output that you are working on, you could comment out chapters 1, 2, and 4 through end of the book. Of course, if you have cross-references from active chapters into commented-out chapters, expect some cross-reference errors.
It is possible to set up a special build that ends the build at the point that the OT creates the merged file and then another build that takes that input and creates the PDF. If you're comfortable with ANT, you can take a look at the build that ships with the OT and determine how you would create those ANT files. I'm not sure how much time you would save but it is something feasible.