docker-compose.yml

version: '2.4'

services:
  example:
    image: python:alpine
    command: ['sh', '-c', 'pip install rabbitpy && python /example/example.py']
    volumes:
      - ./:/example

  rabbitmq:
    image: rabbitmq:alpine
    ports:
      - 5672:5672
      - 15672:15672

test.py

import rabbitpy
import sys
import time

if sys.platform == 'darwin':
    url = 'amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/%2f'
else:
    url = 'amqp://guest:guest@rabbitmq:5672/%2f'

conn = rabbitpy.Connection(url)
channel = conn.channel()

# manually enable this later
## channel.enable_publisher_confirms()

while True:
    print('Publishing!')
    message = rabbitpy.Message(channel, b'content')
    message.publish('amq.topic', 'rk')
    time.sleep(5)

There's not a missing timeout, as the timeout value is the same for READ, WRITE, and ERROR:

https://github.com/gmr/rabbitpy/blob/master/rabbitpy/io.py#L85

it's the difference between kqueue and poll. I've not been in this code for some time, but it's likely around event registration and may even be a Python level bug. I'm poking around on it.