Default tags override event tags

[realdadfish]

In SentryClient.java, this is the implementation of sendEvent:

 public void sendEvent(EventBuilder eventBuilder) {
        if (!Util.isNullOrEmpty(release)) {
            eventBuilder.withRelease(release.trim());
            if (!Util.isNullOrEmpty(dist)) {
                eventBuilder.withDist(dist.trim());
            }
        }

        if (!Util.isNullOrEmpty(environment)) {
            eventBuilder.withEnvironment(environment.trim());
        }

        if (!Util.isNullOrEmpty(serverName)) {
            eventBuilder.withServerName(serverName.trim());
        }

        for (Map.Entry<String, String> tagEntry : tags.entrySet()) {
            eventBuilder.withTag(tagEntry.getKey(), tagEntry.getValue());
        }

        for (Map.Entry<String, Object> extraEntry : extra.entrySet()) {
            eventBuilder.withExtra(extraEntry.getKey(), extraEntry.getValue());
        }

        runBuilderHelpers(eventBuilder);
        Event event = eventBuilder.build();
        sendEvent(event);
    }

In particular - default extras and tags, coming from a parsed DSN for example - seem to override event-specific extras and tags with the same key. I'd consider this unwanted behaviour. A default is nothing more than a default, i.e. a value that is reported when nothing else is there. But if there is a specific value, then this specific value should take precedence.

My use case why I stumbled upon this was that I wanted to have a single tag to distinguish between fatal (reported the built-in uncaught exception handler of Sentry) and non-fatal (reported by my own machinery) crashes, and to mark them I wanted to introduce a tag exception-type. Since I cannot easily change the implementation of Sentry's uncaught exception handler, I thought I could simply give the tag ?tags=exception-type=fatal as default parameter to my DSN and have this used by the exception handler events, while in my own events I'd configure my event .withTag("exception-type=non-fatal") and that would override the default value.

[bruno-garcia]

Thanks for raising this. That's right that values set in the event before going to the client should take precedence.
We'll need to fix this.

[bruno-garcia]

Fix was released:
https://search.maven.org/search?q=io.sentry
Please let us know if you find any issues.

[realdadfish]

Thank you!