Better packaging for creating custom span decorators

[ehmke]

Hi, several rules provide extendable span decorator interfaces. Is there a way to easily import them without depending on the whole specialagent project (not sure if that works) or copying the interfaces to my custom project? What is the strategy behind it?

[ehmke]

Also from usability POV I would find it better to have the option to skip creation of spans in the same place where I define how spans are sent. Right now, I can only skip servlet spans or I would need to use the rewrite functionality.

[safris]

Hi @ehmke, if I understand your first question correctly, you want to use integrations (that have support for custom span decorators) with manual instrumentation? i.e. without SpecialAgent being attached to the application? All of the integrations that implement custom span decorators in SpecialAgent are part of the SpecialAgent's codebase. Therefore, there is no easy way to use these integrations in a manual way (let alone the custom span decorators part). There is an outstanding PR regarding extensibility of the custom span decorator pattern to all integrations.

With regard to your second question: The Rewritable Tracer is the only mechanism capable of overriding the behavior of span creation in integrations. The Rewritable Tracer applies to all integrations, so you should be able to achieve what you desire with a rules JSON config.

[ehmke]

Hey, no I actually meant the usage of decorators with specialagent. Currently, the decorator interfaces are packed into specialagent's main jar. Maybe they could be moved to an -api jar.

The PR your mentioned looks quite promising!
Thanks