[Reproducible-builds] Bug#827222: Support a timeout on the individual commands invoked by diffoscope

[Ed Maste]

Package: diffoscope
Version: 54
Severity: wishlist

I am using diffoscope on FreeBSD and often encounter very long run
times. I've since found that the same issue is known upstream: a
number of Debian reproducibility bugs are tagged with
diffoscope_runs_forever[1] and the Debian CI infrastructure kills it
after 60 minutes.

I think it would be nice to have a configurable runtime limit built in
to diffoscope for the individual commands it invokes (e.g. objdump
--disassemble), so that other nonreproducible components in the same
package (etc.) can still be reported, and so that diffoscope still
obtains a report.

E.g. it could report "Excessive runtime for command 'objdump
--disassemble'. Falling back to binary comparison."

[1] https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/issues/unstable/diffoscope_runs_forever_issue.html