> I just tried
>
> M-x compile RET C-a C-k emacs -Q -daemon RET
>
> and that started a daemon which stayed up in the air and didn't exit
> or get killed.
Yeah, it also works here. I can only guess that Gradle daemon is terminated if
stdout is closed before the main process is shut down or something like that.
> If you see the same on your system, then Gradle,
> whatever that is, is indeed somehow involved in this, because without
> it everything works as you expected.
It's a pretty standard build tool (Make of sorts) in a Java world. They will of