Replaced the static key-value attribute storage in log-record with
sample-evaluated attributes. The 'attr' keyword now accepts a key and a
HAProxy sample expression evaluated at runtime, instead of a static string
value.
The struct (conf.h) changed from otelc_kv/attr_len to a list of
flt_otel_conf_sample entries. The parser (parser.c) calls
flt_otel_parse_cfg_sample() with n=1 per attr keyword. At runtime
(event.c) each attribute is evaluated via flt_otel_sample_eval() and added
via flt_otel_sample_add_kv() to a bare flt_otel_scope_data_kv, which is
passed to logger->log_span().
Updated documentation, debug macro and test configurations.
Added "log-record" as the third OpenTelemetry signal alongside traces
(span) and metrics (instrument). This includes the
flt_otel_conf_log_record structure definition, parser keyword defines,
the otel-scope section parser with optional "id", "event", "span", and
"attr" keywords followed by sample fetch expressions or a log-format
string, init/free lifecycle, scope list wiring, log-format evaluation
in flt_otel_scope_run_instrument_record(), a test configuration example,
log-record span reference validation in flt_otel_check(), and logger
handle creation, startup, and teardown in the filter lifecycle.
Added the "instrument" keyword to otel-scope sections for recording metric
measurements alongside traces.
Introduced flt_otel_conf_instrument holding instrument type, description,
unit, sample expressions, and optional key-value attributes. The
supported synchronous integer-precision instrument types were counters,
histograms, up-down counters, and gauges.
Instruments followed a two-form design: a "create" form defined a new
instrument with its type and value expression, while an "update" form
recorded measurements against an existing instrument with per-scope
attributes.
Instrument creation was performed lazily at first use with HA_ATOMIC_CAS
to guarantee thread-safe one-time initialization. The configuration
check phase validated that every update-form had a matching create-form
definition and that create-form names were unique across all scopes.
The meter lifecycle was integrated into filter init and deinit, starting
the meter alongside the tracer and shutting it down during cleanup.
Added span link support, allowing a span to reference other spans or
extracted contexts without establishing a parent relationship.
Introduced the flt_otel_conf_link structure and added a links list to
flt_otel_conf_span. The parser accepted both an inline syntax on the span
declaration line ("span <name> link <target>") and a standalone multi-
argument form ("link <span> ..."), each creating a conf_link entry
appended to the span's link list.
At runtime, each configured link name was resolved against the active
spans and extracted contexts in the runtime context. Resolved references
were collected into flt_otel_scope_data_link entries and passed to the C
wrapper add_link API during span creation.
Initialization, cleanup, and debug dump routines were added for the link
data structures at both configuration and runtime levels.
Added support for storing OTel span context in HAProxy transaction
variables as an alternative to HTTP headers, enabled by the OTEL_USE_VARS
compile flag.
The new vars.c module implements variable-based context propagation
through the HAProxy variable subsystem. Variable names are constructed
from a configurable prefix and the OTel propagation key, with dots
normalized to underscores for HAProxy variable name compatibility
and denormalized back during retrieval. The module provides
flt_otel_var_register() to pre-register variables at parse time,
flt_otel_var_set() and flt_otel_vars_unset() to store and clear context
key-value pairs in the txn scope, flt_otel_vars_get() to collect all
variables matching a prefix into an otelc_text_map for context extraction,
and flt_otel_vars_dump() for debug logging of all OTel variables.
The inject/extract keywords in the scope parser now accept an optional
"use-vars" argument alongside "use-headers", controlled by the new
FLT_OTEL_CTX_USE_VARS flag. Both storage types can be used simultaneously
on the same span context, allowing context to be propagated through both
HTTP headers and variables.
The scope runner in event.c was extended to handle variable-based
context in parallel with headers: during extraction, it reads matching
variables via flt_otel_vars_get() when FLT_OTEL_CTX_USE_VARS is set;
during injection, it stores each propagation key as a variable via
flt_otel_var_set(). The unused resource cleanup now also unsets context
variables when removing failed extraction contexts.
The filter attach callback registers and sets the sess.otel.uuid variable
with the generated session UUID, making the trace identifier available to
HAProxy log formats and ACL expressions.
The feature is conditionally compiled: the OTEL_USE_VARS flag controls
whether vars.c is included in the build and whether the "use-vars" keyword
is available in the configuration parser.
Added the full configuration parser that reads the OTel filter's external
configuration file and the event model that maps filter events to HAProxy
channel analyzers.
The event model in event.h defines an X-macro table
(FLT_OTEL_EVENT_DEFINES) that maps each filter event to its HAProxy
channel analyzer bit, sample fetch direction, and event name. Events
cover stream lifecycle (start, stop, backend-set, idle-timeout), client
and server sessions, request analyzers (frontend and backend TCP and
HTTP inspection, switching rules, sticking rules, RDP cookie), response
analyzers (TCP inspection, HTTP response processing), and HTTP headers,
end, and reply callbacks. The event names are partially compatible with
the SPOE filter. The flt_otel_event_data[] table in event.c is generated
from the same X-macro and provides per-event metadata at runtime.
The parser in parser.c implements section parsers for the three OTel
configuration blocks: otel-instrumentation (tracer identity, log server,
config file path, groups, scopes, ACLs, rate-limit, options for
disabled/hard-errors/nolognorm, and debug-level), otel-group (group
identity and scope list), and otel-scope (scope identity, span definitions
with optional root/parent modifiers, attributes, events, baggages, status
codes, inject/extract context operations, finish lists, idle-timeout,
ACLs, and otel-event binding with optional if/unless ACL conditions).
Each section has a post-parse callback that validates the parsed state.
The top-level flt_otel_parse_cfg() temporarily registers these section
parsers, loads the external configuration file via parse_cfg(), and
handles deferred resolution of sample fetch arguments by saving them in
conf->smp_args for later resolution in flt_otel_check() when full frontend
and backend capabilities are available. The main flt_otel_parse() entry
point was extended to parse the filter ID and config file keywords, verify
that insecure-fork-wanted is enabled, and wire the parsed configuration
into the flt_conf structure.
The utility layer gained flt_otel_strtod() and flt_otel_strtoll() for
validated string-to-number conversion used by rate-limit and debug-level
parsing.
The OpenTelemetry (OTel) filter enables distributed tracing of requests
across service boundaries, export of metrics such as request rates,
latencies and error counts, and structured logging tied to trace context,
giving operators a unified view of HAProxy traffic through any
OpenTelemetry-compatible backend.
The OTel filter is implemented using the standard HAProxy stream filter
API. Stream filters attach to proxies and intercept traffic at each stage
of processing: they receive callbacks on stream creation and destruction,
channel analyzer events, HTTP header and payload processing, and TCP data
forwarding. This allows the filter to collect telemetry data at every
stage of the request/response lifecycle without modifying the core proxy
logic.
This commit added the minimum set of files required for the filter to
compile: the addon Makefile with pkg-config-based detection of the
opentelemetry-c-wrapper library, header files with configuration
constants, utility macros and type definitions, and the source files
containing stub filter operation callbacks registered through
flt_otel_ops and the "opentelemetry" keyword parser entry point.
The filter uses the opentelemetry-c-wrapper library from HAProxy
Technologies, which provides a C interface to the OpenTelemetry C++ SDK.
This wrapper allows HAProxy, a C codebase, to leverage the full
OpenTelemetry observability pipeline without direct C++ dependencies
in the HAProxy source tree.
https://github.com/haproxytech/opentelemetry-c-wrapperhttps://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-cpp
Build options:
USE_OTEL - enable the OpenTelemetry filter
OTEL_DEBUG - compile the filter in debug mode
OTEL_INC - force the include path to the C wrapper
OTEL_LIB - force the library path to the C wrapper
OTEL_RUNPATH - add the C wrapper RUNPATH to the executable
Example build with OTel and debug enabled:
make -j8 USE_OTEL=1 OTEL_DEBUG=1 TARGET=linux-glibc
