lightstep-opentelemetry-launcher-node

Launcher, a Lightstep Distro for OpenTelemetry 🚀

NOTE: This is in beta and is expected to GA in Fall 2020.

What is Launcher?

Launcher is a configuration layer that chooses default values for configuration options that many OpenTelemetry users want. It provides a single function in each language to simplify discovery of the options and components available to users. The goal of Launcher is to help users that aren't familiar with OpenTelemetry quickly ramp up on what they need to get going and instrument.

Getting started

npm i lightstep-opentelemetry-launcher-node

Configure

Minimal setup

const {
  lightstep,
  opentelemetry,
} = require('lightstep-opentelemetry-launcher-node');

const sdk = lightstep.configureOpenTelemetry({
  accessToken: 'YOUR ACCESS TOKEN',
  serviceName: 'locl-ex',
});

sdk.start().then(() => {
  const tracer = opentelemetry.trace.getTracer('otel-node-example');
  const span = tracer.startSpan('test-span');
  span.end();

  tracer.getActiveSpanProcessor().shutdown();
});

Configuration Options

Config Option	Env Variable	Required	Default
serviceName	LS_SERVICE_NAME	y	-
serviceVersion	LS_SERVICE_VERSION	n	unknown
spanEndpoint	OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_SPAN_ENDPOINT	n	https://ingest.lightstep.com:443/api/v2/otel/trace
metricEndpoint	OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRIC_ENDPOINT	n	https://ingest.lightstep.com:443/metrics
accessToken	LS_ACCESS_TOKEN	n	-
logLevel	OTEL_LOG_LEVEL	n	info
propagators	OTEL_PROPAGATORS	n	b3
resource	OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES	n	-
metricsHostEnabled	LS_METRICS_HOST_ENABLED	n	true

Additional Options

In addition the options below, the configureOpenTelemetry function will take any configuration options supported by the OpenTelemetry Node SDK package and its return value is a NodeSDK instance. See the OpenTelemetry Node SDK documentation for more details.

Principles behind Launcher

100% interoperability with OpenTelemetry

One of the key principles behind putting together Launcher is to make lives of OpenTelemetry users easier, this means that there is no special configuration that requires users to install Launcher in order to use OpenTelemetry. It also means that any users of Launcher can leverage the flexibility of configuring OpenTelemetry as they need.

Validation

Another decision we made with launcher is to provide end users with a layer of validation of their configuration. This provides us the ability to give feedback to our users faster, so they can start collecting telemetry sooner.

Start using it today in Go, Java, Javascript and Python and let us know what you think!

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Made with @ Lightstep

Changelog

0.13.0

• Dependencies have been upgraded to the latest OpenTelemetry JS versions (v0.14.0 for API and SDK components and v0.12.0 for plugins).
• Automatically collects and sends host metrics to Lightstep. This behavior can be controlled by setting the LS_METRICS_HOST_ENABLED environment variable, or the metricsHostEnabled in-code configuration.