Handle edge cases in sorting

**Feature request**
It would be great to have timeout for utils.

**Use case**
Many users need this functionality for production deployments.

**Implementation idea**
Add a new config option `enable_timeout` with default `false`.

Start by locating the utils code and the existing configuration handling, then compare how current options are defined and tested. The issue identifies an `enable_timeout` option with a default of `false`, but does not specify which operations should time out or the expected timeout behavior; those details need clarification before implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.