lightstep-opentelemetry-launcher-node

Launcher, a Lightstep Distro for OpenTelemetry 🚀

NOTE: This is in beta.

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: 'otel-example',
});

sdk.start().then(() => {
  // Make sure to load any modules you use after otel is started so that it
  // has its module loading hooks in place. In general, this is the right place
  // to require your code.
  require('./server-main.js').startServer();
});

Customization

While the built-in automatic instrumentation will provide good coverage for many users, there are scenarios where users may want to write custom instrumentation, or enrich the existing telemetry. Below are links to some resources about the OpenTelemetry API and some examples of its usage:

• OpenTelemetry JS Tracing API
• OpenTelemetry JS Examples

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/traces/otlp/v0.6
accessToken	LS_ACCESS_TOKEN	n	-
logLevel	OTEL_LOG_LEVEL	n	info
propagators	OTEL_PROPAGATORS	n	b3
resource	OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES	n	-

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

0.17.0

• Opentelemetry dependencies have been upgraded to API v1.0.0, core v0.22.0 and contrib v0.22.0.