我已经实现了我能从其中一些收集到的东西。这适用于Windows，因为这是一个社区维基，我想我也会分享我的代码:

class Command(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, cmd, outFile, errFile, timeout):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.cmd = cmd
        self.process = None
        self.outFile = outFile
        self.errFile = errFile
        self.timed_out = False
        self.timeout = timeout

    def run(self):
        self.process = subprocess.Popen(self.cmd, stdout = self.outFile, \
            stderr = self.errFile)

        while (self.process.poll() is None and self.timeout > 0):
            time.sleep(1)
            self.timeout -= 1

        if not self.timeout > 0:
            self.process.terminate()
            self.timed_out = True
        else:
            self.timed_out = False

然后从另一个类或文件:

        outFile =  tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile()
        errFile =   tempfile.SpooledTemporaryFile()

        executor = command.Command(c, outFile, errFile, timeout)
        executor.daemon = True
        executor.start()

        executor.join()
        if executor.timed_out:
            out = 'timed out'
        else:
            outFile.seek(0)
            errFile.seek(0)
            out = outFile.read()
            err = errFile.read()

        outFile.close()
        errFile.close()

预先设置Linux命令超时并不是一个糟糕的解决方法，它对我来说是有效的。

cmd = "timeout 20 "+ cmd
subprocess.Popen(cmd.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
(output, err) = p.communicate()

Jcollado的答案可以使用线程来简化。定时器类:

import shlex
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from threading import Timer

def run(cmd, timeout_sec):
    proc = Popen(shlex.split(cmd), stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
    timer = Timer(timeout_sec, proc.kill)
    try:
        timer.start()
        stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
    finally:
        timer.cancel()

# Examples: both take 1 second
run("sleep 1", 5)  # process ends normally at 1 second
run("sleep 5", 1)  # timeout happens at 1 second

不幸的是，我的雇主在公开源代码方面有非常严格的规定，所以我不能提供实际的代码。但对我来说，最好的解决方案是创建一个子类重写Popen.wait()来轮询，而不是无限期地等待。__init__接受超时参数。一旦你这样做，所有其他Popen方法(调用等待)将按预期工作，包括通信。

下面是Alex Martelli的解决方案，它是一个具有适当进程终止的模块。其他方法不起作用，因为它们没有使用proc. communication()。所以如果你有一个产生大量输出的进程，它会填满它的输出缓冲区，然后阻塞，直到你从中读取一些东西。

from os import kill
from signal import alarm, signal, SIGALRM, SIGKILL
from subprocess import PIPE, Popen

def run(args, cwd = None, shell = False, kill_tree = True, timeout = -1, env = None):
    '''
    Run a command with a timeout after which it will be forcibly
    killed.
    '''
    class Alarm(Exception):
        pass
    def alarm_handler(signum, frame):
        raise Alarm
    p = Popen(args, shell = shell, cwd = cwd, stdout = PIPE, stderr = PIPE, env = env)
    if timeout != -1:
        signal(SIGALRM, alarm_handler)
        alarm(timeout)
    try:
        stdout, stderr = p.communicate()
        if timeout != -1:
            alarm(0)
    except Alarm:
        pids = [p.pid]
        if kill_tree:
            pids.extend(get_process_children(p.pid))
        for pid in pids:
            # process might have died before getting to this line
            # so wrap to avoid OSError: no such process
            try: 
                kill(pid, SIGKILL)
            except OSError:
                pass
        return -9, '', ''
    return p.returncode, stdout, stderr

def get_process_children(pid):
    p = Popen('ps --no-headers -o pid --ppid %d' % pid, shell = True,
              stdout = PIPE, stderr = PIPE)
    stdout, stderr = p.communicate()
    return [int(p) for p in stdout.split()]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print run('find /', shell = True, timeout = 3)
    print run('find', shell = True)

我已经在Windows, Linux和Mac上成功地使用了killableprocess。如果你使用Cygwin Python，你将需要OSAF的killableprocess版本，否则本机Windows进程将不会被杀死。