I use Netbeans 9.0 with a Java Maven project with SpringBoot 2.1M4. The application is running in a terminal window with Spring DevTools enabled so that it reloads every time a .class in target/classes is touched.
This setup generally works fine. Problem is, that sometimes, I notice that Netbeans stopps actually updating the class files. I change the source, save, have of course "compile on save" activated but a find target/classes -name "Foo.class" continues to show the old timestamp so DevTools have no chance to notice the change.
A complete build on the other hand executes Maven and that, of course, regenerates the target/classes files as expected.
Is there any mechanism in Netbeans that I'm not aware of that controls how the Netbeans "incremental compile" affects the class files?
(I experienced similar problems before with Netbeans 8.2 and various application servers or DCEVM/HotSwap, which also monitor file changes)