RabbitMQ + kombu - A long callback blocks the heartbeat leading to aborting the connection

Question

We have been trying to use RabbitMQ to transfer data from Project A to Project B.

We created a producer who takes the data from Project A and puts it in a queue, and that was relatively easy. Then, create a k8s pod for Project B, which listens to the appropriate queue with the ConsumerMixin of kombu.

Overall, the integration was reasonable and straightforward. But when we started to process long messages, we noticed that they were coming back into the queue repeatedly. After research, we found out that whenever the processing of the message takes more than 20 seconds, the message showed up in the queue again, even though the processing was successful.

The source of this issue lies with the heartbeat of RabbitMQ. We set the heartbeat for 10 seconds, and the RabbitMQ checks the connection twice before it kills it. However, because the process of the callback takes more than 20 seconds, and the .ack() (acknowledge) of the message happens at the end of the callback (to ensure it was successful), the heartbeat is being blocked by the process of this message (as described here: https://github.com/celery/kombu/issues/621#issuecomment-251836611).

We have been trying to find a workaround with Threading, to process the message on a different thread and avoid the block of the heartbeat, but it didn't work. Also, it feels like we were trying to hack things and not solve the problem.

So my question here is if there is a proper workaround to handle this situation, or what alternatives do we have? RabbitMQ seemed like the right choice since we use it in standalone projects with Celery, and it is also recommended on the internet.