New OpenTelemetry Kotlin SDK
Following a donation from Embrace and a call for contributors, OpenTelemetry now has a Kotlin SDK in active development.
The project is looking for contributors and folks who are interested in using the library in their application.
Why launch OpenTelemetry for Kotlin?
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) allows running Kotlin code on many different platforms, such as browser, server, and desktop environments. Traditionally Kotlin has been most popular on Android and the JVM, but with the advent of KMP the number of folks using it to share code between different platforms has been steadily growing.
Having a Kotlin Multiplatform implementation of OpenTelemetry allows KMP and Kotlin projects to capture telemetry using one API for many different platforms. The API has been designed to remain as platform-agnostic as possible whilst staying mobile-friendly for the common Android/iOS use-case.
Current state of the project
The Kotlin Special Interest Group (SIG) has started meeting weekly at 9am PST on Mondays. Come join the meeting if you’re interested in discussing the project or have questions that you’d like to discuss synchronously!
The Kotlin SDK currently supports the Android, JVM, iOS, and JS targets. Android/JVM are the most extensively battle-tested at this time.
Initial implementations are available for the Logging and Tracing APIs. These APIs are not considered stable yet, primarily as we’d like to receive further feedback from real-users on the API’s semantics and usability.
Where is the project going?
The project has several long-term goals. Firstly, we plan on stabilizing the Logging and Tracing APIs after receiving sufficient feedback on their usability. Part of this will involve checking that the project complies with the OpenTelemetry specification whilst offering a fluent Kotlin API.
Secondly, a key goal is to attract new folks to the OpenTelemetry ecosystem from mobile development environments. We hope to achieve this with a mobile-friendly API and by fixing some current rough edges that affect client/mobile, such as how process terminations are handled.
Finally, we hope to attract a healthy community of Kotlin developers who are actively contributing and giving feedback to the project.
Call for contributors
If you’re interested in using OpenTelemetry on Kotlin Multiplatform we need your help! We are looking for contributors who are willing to maintain the codebase, participate in regular Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings, and generally help drive the SDK forward.
If you’re interested in contributing please check out how you can help via the repository guidelines and join the #otel-kotlin channel in the CNCF Slack.
If you’re using the project in your application or have any feedback, please do open an issue on the repository with your thoughts. All feedback is incredibly helpful at this early stage and is invaluable for helping the maintainers learn how folks use the project.