What does "Extracting Changed Files ..." mean ?

I get this in Designer 7.1.2 pretty much whenever it’s running, and it can take over an hour to run. It doesn’t seem to affect anything other than the process of exiting Designer. Designer won’t exit until the extraction completes, unless the process is killed from Windows Task Manager.

What is this and why is it needed?

The “Extracting Changed Files” message is displayed when the Software AG metadata extractor is syncing any changed source files with the metadata library. You can disable this feature via the Window->Preferences menu by selecting Software AG->Metadata Library from the tree, and checking the boxes for Disable Workspace Asset Indexing and Disable Metadata Library Collection. You’ll need to restart Designer for the change to take effect.

This feature isn’t required for basic CAF, Task, and Process development in 7.1.2.