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Overview
OpenTelemetry Go provides APIs and SDKs for traces and metrics. Context carries parent relationships, while stdout or OTLP exporters receive generated telemetry.
Features and best fit
Based on official documentation; not hands-on tested · Content checked:
Key features
Best fit
Fit manual and automatic instrumentation in Go services
It combines with HTTP, database, and RPC instrumentation to trace work across services.
Sources: [1]
Before adoption
Official sources
- [1]OpenTelemetry Go README at v1.47.0(2026-10-05)
- [2]stdouttrace example at v1.47.0(2026-10-05)
- [3]Go LICENSE at v1.47.0(2026-10-05)
- [4]Go v1.47.0 release(2026-10-05)
Supplemental curator note
Use the stdout example to verify context propagation and Shutdown, then define rules that keep secrets out of attributes.
Try it in 3 steps
- 1
Enter the pinned stdouttrace example
Install Git and Go 1.26.0 or later; fetch v1.47.0 and enter the official stdouttrace example directory. The first dependency download requires network access.
git clone --branch v1.47.0 --depth 1 https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go.git otel-go-demo && cd otel-go-demo/exporters/stdout/stdouttrace - 2
Run the official Example as a test
Mechanically convert the pinned example_test.go into an executable main, run the SDK with go run, and capture its formatted spans in stdouttrace-run.txt. No external Collector is needed.
(tmp_dir=$(mktemp -d) || exit 1; trap 'rm -rf "$tmp_dir"' EXIT; tmp_main="$tmp_dir/main.go"; sed -e 's/package stdouttrace_test/package main/' -e 's/func Example()/func main()/' example_test.go > "$tmp_main" && (set -o pipefail; go run "$tmp_main" | tee stdouttrace-run.txt)) - 3
Check span names and success
Assert the Calculation, Addition, and Multiplication span names separately to verify that every operation in the official example was recorded.
grep -F '"Name": "Calculation"' stdouttrace-run.txt && grep -F '"Name": "Addition"' stdouttrace-run.txt && grep -F '"Name": "Multiplication"' stdouttrace-run.txt
Growth
Growth trends · Last 30 days
6,572 Stars
Trend data is still being collected.
Development activity
Last 90 days · weekly
- Commits (last 30 days)
- 122
- Open PRs
- 66
- Issues opened
- 64
- Issues closed
- 98
- PRs opened
- 442
- PRs merged
- 359
Issues
64 / 98
Pull requests
442 / 359
Maintenance
- Median first response
- 10 hr
- Issue response rate
- 24.2% (8/33)
Based on up to the 100 newest issues opened by external users in the last 90 days. A first comment from an OWNER, MEMBER, or COLLABORATOR counts as a response; issues whose full comment history cannot be checked are excluded. The median and response rate update weekly.
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Categories and tags
Categories
GitHub data
GitHub dataView detailed GitHub data
GitHub Topics
- tracing
- metrics
- opentelemetry
- logging
- Stars
- 6,572
- Forks
- 1,493
- Watchers
- 69
- Open issues
- 96
- Contributors
- 402
- Owner type
- Organization
- Primary language
- Go
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Repository last updated
- Oct 5, 2026
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