why not ```cd %(somevariable)s```? or do you have no clue where it is exectuded? if not, yes, your proposal is better.

FC18 coreutils provides /usr/bin/timeout, vsc-base will have a timeout run https://github.com/hpcugent/vsc-base/pull/44 (you could backport the code to run_run, but i'm no big fan)