• Author(s): @dmathieu
• Start Date: September 18 2024
• Goal End Date:
• Primary Reviewers: @open-telemetry/ebpf-profiler-maintainers

As we move forward with the OpenTelemetry Collector being able to handle profiles, we also want the profiling agent to be able to run as a collector receiver. See PR #87

We also intend to provide a collector distribution that will bundle the agent, which most folks will want to use.

To support use cases where a custom built distribution is needed, we must provide a stable public API that allows for a receiver to be built and integrated in a distribution.

This design document aims to describe the public API we will be exposing.

We define a clear and concise public API for building custom distributions of the collector with ebpf profiling enabled.

This document describes what the API will look like.

Like any other receiver (see the filelogreceiver as an example), there is a single method we need to expose: NewFactory, which returns a receiver Factory that can handle profiles.

Since the scope of this API is so small, the main question is in which package the API should be located.

We will expose the NewFactory method as part of a collector package within the ebpf repository, meaning importing and using it will be as follows:

package main

import (
	"github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-profiler/collector"
)

func main() {
	factory := collector.NewFactory()
	// Use the factory
}

The intent behind making the factory behind a subpackage as opposed to the root package of the repository is to provide a better separation of concerns between packages.

This subpackage would not be its own module. Since the vision is that the agent should always run as a collector receiver, doing so is probably unnecessary.

Having the receiver in the root package:

package main

import (
	agent "github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-profiler"
)

func main() {
	factory := agent.NewFactory()
	// Use the factory
}

This approach would have the advantage of clarifying that the factory is the root of the agent running as a collector receiver.