Hi Ross, In that block, set am_build_env_is_sane to ``unknown'' if it isn't already set, and do the touch/sleep loop if it is set to unknown. For the default case the behaviour is unchanged but this will allow anyone who wants to gain a second of walltime to set am_build_env_is_sane=yes in a site file or similar, and be it upon their head if they were wrong...
It sounds fine to me. Can you modify your patch to do that? I have a lot of other things to look at (including your other report :). Thanks, Karl