The OpenTelemetry approach to upgrading

Managing widely distributed software at scale requires careful design related to backwards compatibility, versioning, and upgrading. The OpenTelemetry approach is described below. If you are planning on using OpenTelemetry, it can be helpful to understand how we approach this problem.

Component Overview

To facilitate smooth upgrading and long term support, OpenTelemetry clients are factored into several components. We use the following terms in the rest of this document.

Packages is a generic term for units of code which reference each other via some form of dependency management. Note that every programming language has a different approach to dependency management, and may use a different term, such as module or library, to represent this concept.