about TM backing up ${prefix} - another wild(ish?) idea

[Michael]

> I have my backup frequency set to 6h, and I regularly see backup amounts of several Gb if I've been working on larger ports. It's sadly not possible (AFAIK) to know which files are being backed up

First, after a day, Time Machine is down to only one backup per day. So having lots of changes in a day gets turned into only a single set of "net changes" at the end.

Second, you can get a list of what has changed.

$ pushd "$(tmutil machinedirectory)"
keybounceMBP:Keybounce’s MacBook Pro michael$ tmutil compare 2015-02-10-054534 2015-02-10-064618
! 181B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Kleiman Backups/Backups.backupdb/Keybounce’s MacBook Pro/2015-02-10-064618/MainSystem/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist
! 181B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Kleiman Backups/Backups.backupdb/Keybounce’s MacBook Pro/2015-02-10-064618/Kleiman Mobile/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist
! 181B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Kleiman Backups/Backups.backupdb/Keybounce’s MacBook Pro/2015-02-10-064618/Kleiman Movies/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist
! 181B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Kleiman Backups/Backups.backupdb/Keybounce’s MacBook Pro/2015-02-10-064618/107-raw/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist
...
-------------------------------------
Added:         18.8M
Removed:       2.0G
Changed:       4.2G

Getting multiple GB of change during a day is typical for me; it drops to about a single GB net change per day (and most of that is just backblaze tracking one large file that has a map of file names to file ID numbers for the backup)

Third, if you have not yet seen it, "Grand Perspective" does a wonderful job of showing what's in a directory tree. There is a version of it that is modified to work with Time Machine backups, and only show what changes. ... 

Grr. SourceForge is not loading, so I can't point you to the current version.
The version that I use (an older one that only does read operations) is at http://www.twinforces.com/frictionless/time_machine_perspective.html

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