[Reportbug-maint] Bug#784840: network --timeout ineffective

[Antoine Beaupré]

Package: reportbug
Version: 6.6.3
Severity: normal

Running reportbug under very limited network access can be a little
frustrating.

It can take a long time to look at existing bug reports and new
upstream versions, and the way to skip this (-I -b) is not exactly
intuitive when confronted with the wall of text of -h. :)

I spotted "--timeout" in the list, and figured that could be useful:
instead of just abandoning the functionality, i give it a chance but
reduce the timeout to (say) 5 seconds with --timeout=5.

The result is that it still gets stuck on this:

Checking for newer versions at madison, incoming.debian.org and http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html

... and it waits for more than 5 seconds. Try --timeout=1 for easier
results.

Why doesn't the network timeout apply there?

-- Package-specific info:
** Environment settings:
EDITOR="/home/anarcat/bin/e"
DEBEMAIL="anarcat at debian.org"
DEBFULLNAME="Antoine Beaupré"
INTERFACE="text"

** /home/anarcat/.reportbugrc:
reportbug_version "4.12.6"
mode expert
ui text
email "anarcat at koumbit.org"

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages python-reportbug depends on:
ii  apt               1.0.9.8
ii  python-debian     0.1.27
ii  python-debianbts  1.12
pn  python:any        <none>

python-reportbug suggests no packages.