Adding a logical to a meter silently fails

[sameagen-MW]

Blot

Adding a logical to a meter will not increase the meter value, but also does not throw an error or warning. This isn't a timing issue in the example below, the collector had enough time to update between each increment of the meter and curl call below.

Example

>> m = opentelemetry.metrics.getMeter("test")

m = 

  Meter with properties:

       Name: "test"
    Version: ""
     Schema: ""

>> counter = m.createCounter("mycounter")

counter = 

  Counter with properties:

           Name: "mycounter"
    Description: ""
           Unit: ""

>> counter.add(3)

>> !curl -v http://localhost:8889/metrics
curl: /matlab/bin/glnxa64/libcurl.so.4: no version information available (required by curl)
* Host localhost:8889 was resolved.
* IPv6: ::1
* IPv4: 127.0.0.1
*   Trying [::1]:8889...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8889
* using HTTP/1.x
> GET /metrics HTTP/1.1

> Host: localhost:8889

> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1

> Accept: */*

> 

* Request completely sent off
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

< Content-Type: text/plain; version=0.0.4; charset=utf-8; escaping=underscores

< Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2026 20:43:02 GMT

< Content-Length: 190

< Connection: close

< 

# HELP default_mycounter_total 
# TYPE default_mycounter_total counter
default_mycounter_total{job="unknown_service",otel_scope_name="test",otel_scope_schema_url="",otel_scope_version=""} 3
* shutting down connection #0

>> counter.add(logical(1))

>> !curl -v http://localhost:8889/metrics
curl: /matlab/bin/glnxa64/libcurl.so.4: no version information available (required by curl)
* Host localhost:8889 was resolved.
* IPv6: ::1
* IPv4: 127.0.0.1
*   Trying [::1]:8889...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8889
* using HTTP/1.x
> GET /metrics HTTP/1.1

> Host: localhost:8889

> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1

> Accept: */*

> 

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

< Content-Type: text/plain; version=0.0.4; charset=utf-8; escaping=underscores

< Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2026 20:46:11 GMT

< Content-Length: 190

< Connection: close

< 

# HELP default_mycounter_total 
# TYPE default_mycounter_total counter
default_mycounter_total{job="unknown_service",otel_scope_name="test",otel_scope_schema_url="",otel_scope_version=""} 3
* we are done reading and this is set to close, stop send
* abort upload
* shutting down connection #0

>> counter.add(double(logical(1)))
>> !curl -v http://localhost:8889/metrics
curl: /matlab/bin/glnxa64/libcurl.so.4: no version information available (required by curl)
* Host localhost:8889 was resolved.
* IPv6: ::1
* IPv4: 127.0.0.1
*   Trying [::1]:8889...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8889
* using HTTP/1.x
> GET /metrics HTTP/1.1

> Host: localhost:8889

> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1

> Accept: */*

> 

* Request completely sent off
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

< Content-Type: text/plain; version=0.0.4; charset=utf-8; escaping=underscores

< Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2026 20:51:06 GMT

< Content-Length: 190

< Connection: close

< 

# HELP default_mycounter_total 
# TYPE default_mycounter_total counter
default_mycounter_total{job="unknown_service",otel_scope_name="test",otel_scope_schema_url="",otel_scope_version=""} 4
* shutting down connection #0

[duncanpo]

The general approach for dealing with errors in the api code is to silently ignore. This is consistent with the Error Handling section in the OTel spec that recommends not to throw unhandled exceptions.
Some functions in the sdk code may return error, but those tend to be called early in the workflow such as when constructing a TracerProvider, etc.