`shiny[otel]` should include `opentelemetry-distro` for auto-instrumentation support

[marcosnav]

Type

API Reference

Location

https://shiny.posit.co/py/docs/opentelemetry.html#basic-configuration

Issue

Other

Suggested Changes

The standard way to apply opentelemetry instrumentation to a python app is to  run opentelemetry-instrument app so in the case of Shiny it would be opentelemetry-instrument shiny run app.py (which works perfectly fine)

But the Shiny documentation describes a manual process that would conflict with auto instrumentation.

shiny[otel] only brings the opentelemetry-sdk dependency and not opentelemetry-distro which is instead needed for the autoinstrumentation to work as it has knowledge of how the instrumentation needs to be configured and initialized for each python library.

If shiny[otel] did bring in opentelemetry-distro[otlp] that should do (and would also have the benefit of making possible for the user to switch to HTTP or gRPC output easily)

Motivation (Optional)

Cross product integration with OTel auto instrumentation.

Shiny Version (if applicable)

No response

[schloerke]

Thanks for the report — verified that opentelemetry-instrument --traces_exporter console shiny run app.py works with Shiny out of the box (Shiny resolves the global tracer provider lazily at span-creation time, so the wrapper's provider is picked up with no app-code changes; --reload is compatible too). Work is underway across three repos:

py-shiny — #2349:

• shiny[otel] now includes opentelemetry-distro[otlp], exactly as suggested — bare opentelemetry-instrument shiny run app.py works without extra flags, and the OTLP gRPC/HTTP exporters are included.
• The shiny.otel docs and the examples/open-telemetry/ example now treat auto-instrumentation as the standard setup: the example app contains no OTel setup code at all, and in-code trace.set_tracer_provider() is documented as discouraged (providers install once per process, so in-code setup is silently ignored under the wrapper — the conflict this issue called out).

Related PRs/issues:

• docs(otel): Document zero-code auto-instrumentation (opentelemetry-instrument) py-shiny-site#380 — rewrites the Basic Configuration docs this issue links to: opentelemetry-instrument is the standard path, the in-code console setup is removed, and a warning callout explains the provider-override conflict. (Draft until the py-shiny change releases.)
• Add opt-in OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation when running Python apps shiny-vscode#111 / feat: Add shiny.python.otelInstrument setting for OTel auto-instrumentation shiny-vscode#112 — opt-in shiny.python.otelInstrument setting so the VS Code/Positron "Run Shiny App" command launches under opentelemetry-instrument.