So... a funny thing happened...
I spent some time working on an update to this that is MUCH faster - by an order of magnitude. Great stuff.
Then, out of the blue, I remembered something I wrote back in 2016, which I still use now in macros that I run every day. Although obviously I haven't checked the results in a while or I would have remembered.
It's a set of macros that do logging, including having timestamps and elapsed time! They do it by writing to a file. And guess what? You can open the file in BBEdit, and BBEdit will refresh it when the file changes.
2024-08-03 18:00:02.328 1:57:29.882 ********Starting Macro **************************
2024-08-03 18:00:02.631 303 Mounting Volume (if needed)
2024-08-03 18:00:06.036 3.405 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 18:00:06.261 225 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 18:00:06.557 296 Enabling "Time Machine Backups - Check for Done", timeout: 1722736806
2024-08-03 18:00:06.805 248 =========Macro ended without errors==============
2024-08-03 18:01:02.108 55.303 ------------ Checking for Done -------------
2024-08-03 18:01:32.413 30.305 Backup has finished, unmounting volume
2024-08-03 20:00:02.335 1:58:29.922 ********Starting Macro **************************
2024-08-03 20:00:02.636 301 Mounting Volume (if needed)
2024-08-03 20:00:06.043 3.407 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 20:00:06.269 226 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 20:00:06.578 309 Enabling "Time Machine Backups - Check for Done", timeout: 1722744006
2024-08-03 20:00:06.838 260 =========Macro ended without errors==============
2024-08-03 20:01:02.101 55.263 ------------ Checking for Done -------------
2024-08-03 20:01:32.399 30.298 Backup has finished, unmounting volume
2024-08-03 22:00:02.331 1:58:29.932 ********Starting Macro **************************
2024-08-03 22:00:02.630 299 Mounting Volume (if needed)
2024-08-03 22:00:06.064 3.434 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 22:00:06.323 259 Starting Backup
2024-08-03 22:00:06.651 328 Enabling "Time Machine Backups - Check for Done", timeout: 1722751206
2024-08-03 22:00:06.881 230 =========Macro ended without errors==============
2024-08-03 22:01:02.102 55.221 ------------ Checking for Done -------------
2024-08-03 22:01:32.425 30.323 Backup has finished, unmounting volume
2024-08-03 22:01:34.362 1.937 -------- Macro ended without errors --------
So it turns out I actually don't need this BBEdit macro - the file version is much better. Sometimes I can be a real moron. Here's the post I made about it on this forum:
I could actually use the "queue" mechanism I wrote to make the "elapsed time" version a little faster, but at this point, all I can do is shake my head.