## Problem

Starting with Renovate 24.40.0, the renovate process finishes its work but never exits, hanging the Kubernetes cronjob pod. The cause was the AWS SDK ECR client keeping a connection open, so the node process stayed alive.

## Verified fix

Two things. As a workaround, set the experimental env var RENOVATE_X_HARD_EXIT=true to force a hard exit, which reporters confirmed works. Properly fixed in v25.49.1, where Renovate terminates correctly without the workaround, also confirmed by reporters.

Source: https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate/issues/8660