[k-krawczyk]

Fixes #496

Summary

StdioClientTransport.closeGracefully() previously called process.destroy() on the root process only. When the configured command is a wrapper such as npx (POSIX) or cmd.exe /c npx.cmd ... (Windows), the wrapper has already forked child processes (e.g. node.exe, the MCP server itself); destroying only the wrapper leaves those descendants orphaned. On Windows this prevents the JVM from shutting down cleanly — the symptom reported in the issue.

Fix

Walk ProcessHandle.descendants() (JDK 9+, available since the repo's Java 17 baseline) and destroy each descendant before destroying the root. This avoids the OS-specific taskkill /pid X /F /T approach suggested on the issue: same effect, one cross-platform code path, no shelling out.

The descendant snapshot is best-effort — processes forked concurrently with the destroy call may be missed, but the wider tree generally dies with its parent.

Extracted as a package-private static helper destroyProcessTree(Process) for testability.

Tests

New mcp-core/.../StdioClientTransportDestroyTreeTests with three cases:

• destroyProcessTreeTerminatesRootAndDescendants — spawns sh -c 'sleep 60 & sleep 60 & wait' (two child sleeps), captures descendant ProcessHandles, calls the helper, then awaits !isAlive() on every captured handle. POSIX-only via @DisabledOnOs(WINDOWS) since CI runs on Ubuntu.
• destroyProcessTreeTerminatesRootWithNoDescendants — single sleep 60, ensures the root path still works when there is nothing beneath it.
• destroyProcessTreeIsSafeOnAlreadyTerminatedProcess — runs a command that exits immediately, then calls the helper to assert it doesn't throw on a dead Process / ProcessHandle.

Verification

./mvnw verify green locally on macOS across all 11 modules (BUILD SUCCESS, 0 failures, 0 errors). This includes StdioMcpSyncClientTests and StdioMcpAsyncClientTests, which exercise the close path through a real npx subprocess.

Caveat

I'm on macOS, so the original Windows symptom is verified only by reasoning about the JDK API, not exercised end-to-end. ProcessHandle.descendants() is a JDK-level abstraction that works across platforms, but I'd appreciate a reviewer with Windows confirming the report from #496 is resolved. Happy to switch to explicit taskkill instead if maintainers prefer the explicit route.