I realised that there is conditional itimer code in utils.c for alarm_set() and alarm_cancel(). It needs ITIMER_REAL to be defined, which is done in sys/time.h (Linux, BSD, maybe other OSes).
Since the fallback code calls alarm(), no sub-second timeout is available. At least on a current Debian SID, where sys/time.h is not implicitely included. The attached patch adds #include <sys/time.h> to fix the issue. Tim
=== modified file 'src/utils.c' --- src/utils.c 2012-03-25 15:49:55 +0000 +++ src/utils.c 2012-03-28 11:10:57 +0000 @@ -59,6 +59,11 @@ # endif #endif +/* Needed for itimer support in alarm_set() and alarm_cancel() */ +# ifdef HAVE_SYS_TIME_H +# include <sys/time.h> +# endif + #include <sys/stat.h> /* For TIOCGWINSZ and friends: */
