1# OpenTelemetry-Go
2
3[](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
4[](https://app.codecov.io/gh/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go?branch=main)
5[](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/otel)
6[](https://goreportcard.com/report/go.opentelemetry.io/otel)
7[](https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go)
8[](https://www.bestpractices.dev/projects/9996)
9[](https://cloud-native.slack.com/archives/C01NPAXACKT)
10
11OpenTelemetry-Go is the [Go](https://golang.org/) implementation of [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/).
12It provides a set of APIs to directly measure performance and behavior of your software and send this data to observability platforms.
13
14## Project Status
15
16| Signal | Status |
17|---------|--------------------|
18| Traces | Stable |
19| Metrics | Stable |
20| Logs | Beta[^1] |
21
22Progress and status specific to this repository is tracked in our
23[project boards](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/projects)
24and
25[milestones](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/milestones).
26
27Project versioning information and stability guarantees can be found in the
28[versioning documentation](VERSIONING.md).
29
30[^1]: https://github.com/orgs/open-telemetry/projects/43
31
32### Compatibility
33
34OpenTelemetry-Go ensures compatibility with the current supported versions of
35the [Go language](https://golang.org/doc/devel/release#policy):
36
37> Each major Go release is supported until there are two newer major releases.
38> For example, Go 1.5 was supported until the Go 1.7 release, and Go 1.6 was supported until the Go 1.8 release.
39
40For versions of Go that are no longer supported upstream, opentelemetry-go will
41stop ensuring compatibility with these versions in the following manner:
42
43- A minor release of opentelemetry-go will be made to add support for the new
44 supported release of Go.
45- The following minor release of opentelemetry-go will remove compatibility
46 testing for the oldest (now archived upstream) version of Go. This, and
47 future, releases of opentelemetry-go may include features only supported by
48 the currently supported versions of Go.
49
50Currently, this project supports the following environments.
51
52| OS | Go Version | Architecture |
53|----------|------------|--------------|
54| Ubuntu | 1.24 | amd64 |
55| Ubuntu | 1.23 | amd64 |
56| Ubuntu | 1.22 | amd64 |
57| Ubuntu | 1.24 | 386 |
58| Ubuntu | 1.23 | 386 |
59| Ubuntu | 1.22 | 386 |
60| Ubuntu | 1.24 | arm64 |
61| Ubuntu | 1.23 | arm64 |
62| Ubuntu | 1.22 | arm64 |
63| macOS 13 | 1.24 | amd64 |
64| macOS 13 | 1.23 | amd64 |
65| macOS 13 | 1.22 | amd64 |
66| macOS | 1.24 | arm64 |
67| macOS | 1.23 | arm64 |
68| macOS | 1.22 | arm64 |
69| Windows | 1.24 | amd64 |
70| Windows | 1.23 | amd64 |
71| Windows | 1.22 | amd64 |
72| Windows | 1.24 | 386 |
73| Windows | 1.23 | 386 |
74| Windows | 1.22 | 386 |
75
76While this project should work for other systems, no compatibility guarantees
77are made for those systems currently.
78
79## Getting Started
80
81You can find a getting started guide on [opentelemetry.io](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/go/getting-started/).
82
83OpenTelemetry's goal is to provide a single set of APIs to capture distributed
84traces and metrics from your application and send them to an observability
85platform. This project allows you to do just that for applications written in
86Go. There are two steps to this process: instrument your application, and
87configure an exporter.
88
89### Instrumentation
90
91To start capturing distributed traces and metric events from your application
92it first needs to be instrumented. The easiest way to do this is by using an
93instrumentation library for your code. Be sure to check out [the officially
94supported instrumentation
95libraries](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/tree/main/instrumentation).
96
97If you need to extend the telemetry an instrumentation library provides or want
98to build your own instrumentation for your application directly you will need
99to use the
100[Go otel](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/otel)
101package. The [examples](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/tree/main/examples)
102are a good way to see some practical uses of this process.
103
104### Export
105
106Now that your application is instrumented to collect telemetry, it needs an
107export pipeline to send that telemetry to an observability platform.
108
109All officially supported exporters for the OpenTelemetry project are contained in the [exporters directory](./exporters).
110
111| Exporter | Logs | Metrics | Traces |
112|---------------------------------------|:----:|:-------:|:------:|
113| [OTLP](./exporters/otlp/) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
114| [Prometheus](./exporters/prometheus/) | | ✓ | |
115| [stdout](./exporters/stdout/) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
116| [Zipkin](./exporters/zipkin/) | | | ✓ |
117
118## Contributing
119
120See the [contributing documentation](CONTRIBUTING.md).