What do bug-automake people think? For myself, I have no objection to sprinkling timeout commands through the Automake test infrastructure wherever appropriate. It's not ever going to rise to the top of my own list of things to do, though, so if it's going to happen, you or someone will have to write the patch.
Of course I don't speak for Jim, but from what he's said in the past, I suspect he is in a similar situation. No one else has come forward to work on Automake, despite my plea (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2021-03/msg00018.html), so I guess that's where we are. the functionality could be opt-in initially, Certainly. and then after a few years become the default behaviour. Personally, I think it should be opt-in forever. People could easily have test suites that need to run for days. I prefer not to unnecessarily break compatibility. Thanks, Karl
