Support excluding MDC attributes from capture-all

[philsttr]

Problem

I need the ability to exclude specific attributes when capturing MDC/context-data. Previously, the logging instrumentations supported including all attributes (e.g. *) or specific attributes (e.g. foo,bar). But there was no way to say "include everything except x). This PR adds that capability.

Closes #14925

Change Summary

Added the ability to exclude specific attributes when capturing all MDC/context-data attributes with the * wildcard, across the jboss-logmanager, log4j 1.2, log4j 2.17, and logback log appenders. Prefix an attribute name with ! to exclude it.

*           → capture all MDC attributes (unchanged)
*,!foo      → capture all MDC attributes except "foo"
*,!foo,!bar → capture all except "foo" and "bar"
!foo        → capture only key named "!foo"  (literally, preserves backwards compatibility)

Behavior

• The * check changed from "list is exactly [*]" to "list contains *", so * can be combined with !-prefixed exclusions.
• Exclusions only apply in the capture-all path; explicit attribute lists behave as before.
• otel.event.name remains special-cased (mapped to the log event name, never emitted as an attribute).
• These are all experimental config options, so no stable API is affected.

Changes by area

Mappers (core logic. identical small change in each)

Module	File
log4j 1.2	LogEventMapper.java
log4j 2.17	LogEventMapper.java (context data)
logback	LoggingEventMapper.java
jboss-logmanager	LoggingEventMapper.java

Each parses !-prefixed entries into an exclusion Set<String> and skips those keys when iterating the MDC map.

Tests

• testAllWithExclusion added to the two library modules with directly testable mappers (log4j 2.17 and logback).
• javaagent-only mappers (log4j 1.2, jboss) share the identical logic; covered by the library unit tests.

Documentation

• 4 metadata.yaml descriptions + a *,!foo example.
• 5 README.md settings tables (realigned to the repo's table style).

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Note

Copilot was unable to run its full agentic suite in this review.

Adds support for excluding specific MDC/context-data keys when wildcard capture (*) is enabled across multiple logging appenders/instrumentations.

Changes:

• Implement exclusion syntax (!key) when wildcard capture is enabled in Logback / Log4j / JBoss Log Manager mappers.
• Add unit tests for exclusion behavior in Logback and Log4j 2.17.
• Update metadata and READMEs to document *,!foo configuration.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 16 out of 16 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
instrumentation/logback/logback-appender-1.0/metadata.yaml	Documents !key exclusions alongside * wildcard capture.
instrumentation/logback/logback-appender-1.0/library/src/test/java/io/opentelemetry/instrumentation/logback/appender/v1_0/internal/LoggingEventMapperTest.java	Adds test coverage for wildcard capture with exclusions.
instrumentation/logback/logback-appender-1.0/library/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/instrumentation/logback/appender/v1_0/internal/LoggingEventMapper.java	Implements exclusion set for MDC capture when using *.
instrumentation/logback/logback-appender-1.0/javaagent/README.md	Documents *,!foo exclusion syntax for MDC capture.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-2.17/metadata.yaml	Documents !key exclusions alongside * wildcard capture.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-2.17/library/src/test/java/io/opentelemetry/instrumentation/log4j/appender/v2_17/internal/LogEventMapperTest.java	Adds test coverage for wildcard capture with exclusions.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-2.17/library/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/instrumentation/log4j/appender/v2_17/internal/LogEventMapper.java	Implements exclusion set for context data capture when using *.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-2.17/library/README.md	Documents *,!foo exclusion syntax for context data capture.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-2.17/javaagent/README.md	Documents *,!foo exclusion syntax for context data capture.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-1.2/metadata.yaml	Documents !key exclusions alongside * wildcard capture.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-1.2/javaagent/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/javaagent/instrumentation/log4j/appender/v1_2/LogEventMapper.java	Implements exclusion set for MDC capture when using *.
instrumentation/log4j/log4j-appender-1.2/javaagent/README.md	Documents *,!foo exclusion syntax for MDC capture.
instrumentation/jboss-logmanager/jboss-logmanager-appender-1.1/metadata.yaml	Documents !key exclusions alongside * wildcard capture.
instrumentation/jboss-logmanager/jboss-logmanager-appender-1.1/javaagent/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/javaagent/instrumentation/jbosslogmanager/appender/v1_1/LoggingEventMapper.java	Implements exclusion set for MDC capture when using *.
instrumentation/jboss-logmanager/README.md	Documents *,!foo exclusion syntax for MDC capture.
docs/instrumentation-list.yaml	Propagates exclusion syntax into generated instrumentation docs.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

instrumentation/logback/logback-appender-1.0/library/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/instrumentation/logback/appender/v1_0/internal/LoggingEventMapper.java:1

• When * is not present, entries like "!key2" are currently treated as a literal attribute key (because only "*" is filtered out). Since docs define !key as meaningful only with *, it would be better to ignore !… entries (or fail fast / warn) in the non-wildcard branch to avoid silently doing something unexpected.

/*

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 18 out of 18 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 20 out of 20 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 20 out of 20 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

[laurit]

Is there prior art for this in otel ecosystem? There is a moratorium in otel spec for introducing new environment variables with complex encoding. The moratorium was originally in place to incentivize development of declarative config, which is done now. While we are not strictly bound by this moratorium the question is still whether there could be a better solution for this that does not involve complex encodings. Perhaps some sort of include/exclude pair would work better?
cc @trask

[philsttr]

I'm happy to refactor if needed. Let me know your concrete suggestions. (e.g. new option names, and what to do with the existing option names)

[trask]

check out declarative config and the pattern for includes/excludes:

• https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-configuration
• https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-configuration/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#properties-requiring-pattern-matching
• https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/blob/main/sdk/common/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/sdk/common/internal/IncludeExcludePredicate.java

[philsttr]

I've updated the code to have both include and exclude properties as suggested. The existing capture-mdc-attributes properties are the include properties (to keep backwards compatibility). And I've added new exclude-mdc-attributes properties to each instrumentation to handle excludes.

The instrumentations now use IncludeExcludePredicate from opentelemetry-sdk-common. Is this allowed?
I had to add the dependency, which I think is the source of the muzzle problems, but it's not obvious to me how to fix it.
I could use some guidance on the muzzle failures.