Node: process never exits since 10.72 — beforeExit session send + client-report flush feed each other (skipOpenTelemetrySetup: true)

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have checked for existing issues https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/issues
• I have reviewed the documentation https://docs.sentry.io/
• I am using the latest SDK release https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-javascript/releases

How do you use Sentry?

Sentry Saas (sentry.io)

Which SDK are you using?

@sentry/node

SDK Version

10.73.0 (also 10.72.0; 10.54.0 is fine)

Framework Version

Node 22.22.2

Link to Sentry event

No response

Reproduction Example/SDK Setup

// repro.mjs — run with a DSN pointing at any HTTP server that answers 200, e.g. a stub on localhost
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node"
Sentry.init({
  dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN,
  release: "1.0.0",              // any release, so the process session is sendable
  skipOpenTelemetrySetup: true,  // we run our own OTel pipeline elsewhere
  tracesSampleRate: undefined,   // tracing off
})
console.log("done; letting the process exit naturally")

Stub receiver used for the counts below:

import http from "node:http"
let n = 0
http.createServer((req, res) => { let b = ""; req.on("data", c => b += c); req.on("end", () => {
  n++; console.log(n, req.url, [...b.matchAll(/"type":"([a-z_]+)"/g)].map(m => m[1]).join(","), b.slice(-160)); res.end("{}") }) }).listen(9999)

Steps to Reproduce

1. node stub.mjs
2. SENTRY_DSN=http://k@localhost:9999/1 node repro.mjs

Expected Result

The process sends the session (and at most one client report) and exits.

Actual Result

The process never exits. The stub receives one session envelope and then an endless stream of client_report envelopes, each containing:

{"discarded_events":[{"reason":"no_parent_span","category":"span","quantity":1}]}

CPU sits at 60–100% against a local stub; against a real DSN the loop is network-bound but the process is still immortal. We hit this in a Cloud Run job running database migrations, which hung until its 600 s task timeout on every deploy after upgrading from 10.54.

What appears to happen:

1. #23731 (10.72) makes processSessionIntegration end the session on beforeExit when its status is ok, so a healthy process now sends a session envelope at exit (previously the condition was inverted and healthy processes sent nothing).
2. That transport request is instrumented by the http integration. With no OTel setup and tracing off, its span is dropped and recordDroppedEvent("no_parent_span", "span") records an outcome.
3. The client-report beforeExit listener flushes the new outcome → another instrumented request → another no_parent_span outcome → beforeExit again → …

Confirmed by elimination:

init options	result
{ dsn, release }	1 session, exits
{ dsn, release, skipOpenTelemetrySetup: true }	1 session + infinite client reports, never exits
{ dsn, release, skipOpenTelemetrySetup: true, sendClientReports: false }	1 session, exits
same as row 2 on 10.54.0	nothing sent, exits

await Sentry.close() before exiting also avoids it, but the default behaviour of a process that simply finishes should not be to hang.

Additional Context

Suggested fixes: don't record a no_parent_span outcome for the SDK's own transport requests, and/or don't re-arm the client-report flush from within a beforeExit flush (e.g. only flush outcomes that existed before the current beforeExit tick).

Priority

Medium