OpenTelemetry Rust

The Rust OpenTelemetry implementation.

Overview

OpenTelemetry is a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs used to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) for analysis in order to understand your software's performance and behavior. You can export and analyze them using Prometheus, Jaeger, and other observability tools.

Supported Rust Versions

Project Status

The table below summarizes the overall status of each component. Some components include unstable features, which are documented in their respective crate documentation.

Signal/Component	Overall Status
Context	Beta
Baggage	RC
Propagators	Beta
Logs-API	Stable*
Logs-SDK	Stable
Logs-OTLP Exporter	RC
Logs-Appender-Tracing	Stable
Metrics-API	Stable
Metrics-SDK	Stable
Metrics-OTLP Exporter	RC
Traces-API	Beta
Traces-SDK	Beta
Traces-OTLP Exporter	Beta

*OpenTelemetry Rust is not introducing a new end user callable Logging API. Instead, it provides Logs Bridge API, that allows one to write log appenders that can bridge existing logging libraries to the OpenTelemetry log data model. The following log appenders are available:

• opentelemetry-appender-log
• opentelemetry-appender-tracing

If you already use the logging APIs from above, continue to use them, and use the appenders above to bridge the logs to OpenTelemetry. If you are using a library not listed here, feel free to contribute a new appender for the same.

If you are starting fresh, we recommend using tracing as your logging API. It supports structured logging and is actively maintained. OpenTelemetry itself uses tracing for its internal logging.

Project versioning information and stability guarantees can be found here.

Getting Started

If you are new to OpenTelemetry, start with the Stdout Example. This example demonstrates how to use OpenTelemetry for logs, metrics, and traces, and display telemetry data on your console.

For those using OTLP, the recommended OpenTelemetry Exporter for production scenarios, refer to the OTLP Example - HTTP and the OTLP Example - gRPC.

Additional examples for various integration patterns can be found in the examples directory.

Overview of crates

The following crates are maintained in this repo:

• opentelemetry This is the OpenTelemetry API crate, and is the crate required to instrument libraries and applications. It contains Context API, Baggage API, Propagators API, Logging Bridge API, Metrics API, and Tracing API.
• opentelemetry-sdk This is the OpenTelemetry SDK crate, and contains the official OpenTelemetry SDK implementation. It contains Logging SDK, Metrics SDK, and Tracing SDK. It also contains propagator implementations.
• opentelemetry-otlp - exporter to send telemetry (logs, metrics and traces) in the OTLP format to an endpoint accepting OTLP. This could be the OTel Collector, telemetry backends like Jaeger, Prometheus or vendor specific endpoints.
• opentelemetry-stdout exporter for sending logs, metrics and traces to stdout, for learning/debugging purposes.
• opentelemetry-http This crate contains utility functions to help with exporting telemetry, propagation, over http.
• opentelemetry-appender-log This crate provides logging appender to route logs emitted using the log crate to opentelemetry.
• opentelemetry-appender-tracing This crate provides logging appender to route logs emitted using the tracing crate to opentelemetry.
• opentelemetry-jaeger-propagator provides context propagation using jaeger propagation format.
• opentelemetry-prometheus provides a pipeline and exporter for sending metrics to Prometheus.
• opentelemetry-semantic-conventions provides standard names and semantic otel conventions.
• opentelemetry-zipkin provides a pipeline and exporter for sending traces to Zipkin.

In addition, there are several other useful crates in the OTel Rust Contrib repo. A lot of crates maintained outside OpenTelemetry owned repos can be found in the OpenTelemetry Registry.

Supported Rust Versions

OpenTelemetry is built against the latest stable release. The minimum supported version is 1.75. The current OpenTelemetry version is not guaranteed to build on Rust versions earlier than the minimum supported version.

The current stable Rust compiler and the three most recent minor versions before it will always be supported. For example, if the current stable compiler version is 1.49, the minimum supported version will not be increased past 1.46, three minor versions prior. Increasing the minimum supported compiler version is not considered a semver breaking change as long as doing so complies with this policy.

Contributing

See the contributing file.

The Rust special interest group (SIG) meets weekly on Tuesdays at 9 AM Pacific Time. The meeting is subject to change depending on contributors' availability. Check the OpenTelemetry community calendar for specific dates and for Zoom meeting links. "OTel Rust SIG" is the name of meeting for this group.

Meeting notes are available as a public Google doc. If you have trouble accessing the doc, please get in touch on Slack.

The meeting is open for all to join. We invite everyone to join our meeting, regardless of your experience level. Whether you're a seasoned OpenTelemetry developer, just starting your journey, or simply curious about the work we do, you're more than welcome to participate!

Approvers and Maintainers

Maintainers

• Cijo Thomas, Microsoft
• Harold Dost
• Lalit Kumar Bhasin, Microsoft
• Utkarsh Umesan Pillai, Microsoft
• Zhongyang Wu

For more information about the maintainer role, see the community repository.

Approvers

• Anton Grübel, Baz
• Björn Antonsson, Datadog
• Scott Gerring, Datadog
• Shaun Cox, Microsoft

For more information about the approver role, see the community repository.

Emeritus

• Dirkjan Ochtman
• Isobel Redelmeier
• Jan Kühle
• Julian Tescher
• Mike Goldsmith

For more information about the emeritus role, see the community repository.

Thanks to all the people who have contributed