An OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) Exporter for Perl
This is part of an ongoing attempt at implementing the OpenTelemetry standard in Perl. The distribution in this repository implements an OpenTelemetry exporter that uses the OpenTelemetry Protocol to send the telemetry data to a collector. For ways to generate that telemetry data, you should look into the OpenTelemetry API distribution (if you are a library author) or the OpenTelemetry::SDK distribution (if you are an application author).
What is OpenTelemetry?
OpenTelemetry is an open source observability framework, providing a general-purpose API, SDK, and related tools required for the instrumentation of cloud-native software, frameworks, and libraries.
OpenTelemetry provides a single set of APIs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces and metrics from your application. You can analyze them using Prometheus, Jaeger, and other observability tools.
How does this distribution fit in?
The telemetry data provided by the API and SDK distributions needs to be sent and collected somewhere for processing. This distribution provides an OTLP exporter class that can be used to send telemetry data to a collector that supports that protocol.
This distribution will be used by the OpenTelemetry::SDK distribution to send telemetry data (if configured to do so). If you are not writing an application that will send telemetry data to a collector, then you are unlikely to need distribution directly.
How do I get started?
This reporisoty has some external dependencies. In particular, it requires on
the API and SDK distributions, but it also requires cmake, a C++
compiler, and the development headers for the protobuf and protoc
libraries. Check the documentation of your system for how to install these
system dependencies. Here are some examples for some common Linux
distributions:
# Debian / Ubuntu
apt install g++ cmake libprotobuf-dev libprotoc-dev
# Arch
pacman -S gcc protobuf
You can then install this distribution from the repository (the aim is for it to be on CPAN at some point):
cd path/to/this/repo
cpanm install .
Then, if the SDK is configured to use this exporter, the telemetry data it generates should be exported to the specified endpoint automatically. OTLP is the default exporter for OpenTelemetry::SDK, so unless you've specifically configured it otherwise, you will start using it automatically.
Please refer to the documentation of that distribution for details on how to load it and configure it.
How can I get involved?
For now, this distribution exists on Github only, together with some related distributions like the API and SDK distributions.
We are in the process of setting up an OpenTelemetry-Perl special interest group (SIG). Until that is set up, you are free to express your interest or join us in IRC.
License
The OpenTelemetry::Exporter::OTLP distribution is licensed under the same terms as Perl itself. See LICENSE for more information.