[tedunangst]

If you find yourself measuring compile times frequently, I think you'll be much happier with a command that actually times the operation than trying to eyeball it from the status bar. I can't imagine staring at a compilation and being unable to look away lest I miss the finish.

[kakarot]

Well it's more out of curiosity and I don't specifically measure compile times often. I develop in a variety of domains and for some things a fuzzy count of how many seconds something takes is useful. If keeping track of things with finer grained tools is required, that's fine. Whichever is the most productive for the given problem.