should opentelemetry-instrument read code config?

[JamieDanielson]

I run with opentelemetry-instrument, it doesn’t pick up my code configuration in this app.

poetry run opentelemetry-instrument python3 app.py results in unknown_service:python and debug is not true.

poetry run python3 app.py correctly picks up those env vars 🤔

I guess the question is… should it? Or does using opentelemetry-instrument mean you can only use env vars and not config in code with configure_opentelemetry?

[emilyashley]

I have this question, too!

[emilyashley]

I think after discussion we landed on sticking to one or the other (configure_opentelemetry() or opentelemetry-instrument), not mix and match.

@JamieDanielson I'm curious if you think this documentation makes it clear that we expect one or the other? https://github.com/honeycombio/honeycomb-opentelemetry-python/blob/main/src/honeycomb/opentelemetry/distro.py#L3

If so, we'll make sure to put this in the main documentation and we can close this issue?

[MikeGoldsmith]

Yep, that's right - both opentelemetry-instrument and configure_opentelemetry trigger the distro hook to configure the OTel SDK. If both are called, it will configure the SDK twice, which can lead to unexpected setups.

If you want a zero-code solution that's only driven by env vars you would use opentemetry-instrument.
if you want to configure via code (and optionally mix with env vars), you would use configure_opentelemetry.

[emilyashley]

Great! I'll make sure it's extra clear which example app uses which way! This looks good to close to me ✨