Welcome to OpenTelemetry! This document is the single source of truth for how to contribute to the code base. Feel free to browse the open issues and file new ones, all feedback welcome!
Before you can contribute, you will need to sign the Contributor License Agreement.
License information should be included in all source files where applicable. Either full or short version of the header should be used as described at apache.org. It is OK to exclude the year from the copyright notice. For the details on how to apply the copyright, see the next section.
OpenTelemetry follows CNCF recommendations for copyright notices. We use "Copyright The OpenTelemetry Authors" notice form.
According to CNCF recommendations if you are contributing third-party code you will need to retain the original copyright notice.
Any contributed third-party code must originally be Apache 2.0-Licensed or must carry a permisive software license that is compatible when combining with Apache 2.0 License. At this moment, BSD and MIT are the only OSI-approved licenses known to be compatible.
If you make substantial changes to the third-party code, prepend the contributed third party file with OpenTelemetry's copyright notice.
If the contributed code is not third-party code and you are the author we strongly encourage to avoid including your name in the notice and use the generic "Copyright The OpenTelemetry Authors" notice. See rationale for this recommendation here.
Please make sure to read and observe our Code of Conduct.
OpenTelemetry is a community project. Consequently, it is wholly dependent on its community to provide a productive, friendly, and collaborative environment.
- See Community Membership for a list the various responsibilities of contributor roles. You are encouraged to move up this contributor ladder as you gain experience.
Would you like to help make robust, modern telemetry a built-in feature of modern software? We will help you understand the organization of the project and direct you to the best places to get started. You'll be able to pick up issues, write code to fix them, and get your work reviewed and merged.
Please be aware that, due to the number of issues our triage team deals with, we cannot offer technical support in GitHub issues. If you have questions about the development process, feel free to jump into our Slack Channel (Get an invite to join CNCF). You can also ask questions on Stack Overflow.
Help is always welcome! For example, documentation (like the text you are reading now) can always use improvement. There's always code that can be clarified and variables or functions that can be renamed or commented. There's always a need for more test coverage. You get the idea: if you ever see something you think should be fixed, you should own it.
You can also find issues crafted for contributions using the tag opentelemetry at up-for-grabs.net.
Those interested in contributing without writing code may help documenting, evangelizing or helping answer questions about OpenTelemetry on various forums.
There are multiple repositories within the OpenTelemetry organization. Each repository has beginner-friendly issues that provide a good stepping stone to larger contributions. For example, Java SDK has help wanted and good first issue labels for issues that should not need deep knowledge of the system. The good first issue label indicates that members have committed to providing extra assistance for new contributors.
Often, new contributors ask to be assigned an issue they are willing to take on. Unfortunately, due to GitHub limitations we can only assign issues to org members or repo collaborators. Instead, please state in a comment that you intend to work on this issue and it will be assumed to be yours.
You may have noticed that some repositories in the OpenTelemetry Organization are owned by Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. We organize the community into SIGs in order to improve our workflow and more easily manage a community project. The developers within each SIG have autonomy and ownership over that SIG's part of OpenTelemetry.
A SIG is an open, community effort. Anybody is welcome to jump into a SIG and begin fixing issues, critiquing design proposals and reviewing code. SIGs have regular video meetings which everyone is welcome to attend.
Some SIGs have their own CONTRIBUTING.md files, which may contain extra information or guidelines in addition to these general ones. These are located in the SIG-specific GitHub repositories.
Not ready to contribute code, but see something that needs work? While the community encourages everyone to contribute code, it is also appreciated when someone reports an issue (aka problem). Issues should be filed under the appropriate OpenTelemetry subrepository.
Make sure to adhere to the repository specific policies or issue templates to provide detailed information that will help prompt answer and resolution of an issue.
OpenTelemetry is open source, but many of the people working on it do so as their day job. In order to avoid forcing people to be "at work" effectively 24/7, we want to establish some semi-formal protocols around development. Hopefully, these rules make things go more smoothly. If you find that this is not the case, please complain loudly.
As a potential contributor, your changes and ideas are welcome at any hour of the day or night, weekdays, weekends, and holidays. Please do not ever hesitate to ask a question or send a pull request.
It is best to contact your SIG for issues related to the SIG's topic. Your SIG will be able to help you much more quickly than a general question would.
For general questions and troubleshooting, use the standard lines of communication.
To check out code to work on, please refer to the GitHub Workflow Guide from Kubernetes. OpenTelemetry uses the same workflow. One of the main highlights - all the work should happen on forks, to minimize the number of branches on a given repository.
Pull requests are often called simply "PR". OpenTelemetry follows the standard github pull request process.
Common new contributor PR issues are:
- not having correctly signed the CLA ahead of your first PR (please Sign the CLA)
- following any SIG or repository specific contributing guidelines (see CONTRIBUTING.md of the corresponding repository)
- dealing with test cases which fail on your PR, unrelated to the changes you introduce
- Introducing change that should be first be approved by TSC, for instance, the introduction of new terminology
There are two aspects of code review: giving and receiving.
To make it easier for your PR to receive reviews, consider the reviewers will need you to:
- follow the project and repository coding conventions
- write good commit messages
- break large changes into a logical series of smaller patches which individually make easily understandable changes, and in aggregate solve a broader issue
- label PRs with appropriate SIGs and reviewers: to do this read the messages the bot sends you to guide you through the PR process
Reviewers, the people giving the review, are highly encouraged to revisit the Code of Conduct and must go above and beyond to promote a collaborative, respectful community.
When reviewing PRs from others The Gentle Art of Patch Review suggests an iterative series of focuses which is designed to lead new contributors to positive collaboration without inundating them initially with nuances:
- Is the idea behind the contribution sound?
- Is the contribution architected correctly?
- Is the contribution polished?
Note: if your pull request isn't getting enough attention, you can explicitly mention approvers or maintainers of this repository.
If you haven't noticed by now, we have a large, lively, and friendly open-source community. We depend on new people becoming members and regular code contributors, so we would like you to come join us! The Community Membership Document covers membership processes and roles.
Donations of preexisting code fall into two broad categories:
- Small donations: Some donations only amount to a single PR and should usually just be contributed as such
- Large or complex donations: Other donations are much larger, require ongoing maintenance of their own, and/or introduce nuanced licensing issues
Large donations – or small donations that turn up complex issues during PR
review – should be referred to the Technical Committee (TC) by filing an issue
in this community repository and tagging
@open-telemetry/technical-committee. The TC will respond to donation
proposals within two weeks (that is, after having time to meet and discuss
live). If the TC has not responded to the donation request within that
interval, the donating party can and should point to this document and request
guidance at the TC's earliest convenience.
All donated code requires a license compatible with the Apache Software License 2.0, and donated code will require a change of copyright to reflect the OpenTelemetry Authors. The Governance Committee will also ask to review any trademarks (like the names of components) the donation can carry and make a decision to either remove those trademarks or transfer them to the CNCF.
Broadly, these are the steps the OpenTelemetry Governance and Technical Committees follow to handle a prospective donation.
- Per the above, the donating organization creates a GitHub issue with
the "Donation Proposal" template
in the
communityrepository. - The Technical Committee (TC) will do diligence, write a report, and attach that report to the GitHub issue. Writing the report may require meeting and discussing alternative technologies with different vendors in the community and can be a lengthy process. The TC member driving the report will post updates and time estimates to the issue.
- The Governance Committee (GC) will consider the report and make a final decision about the donation. The GC must ensure that the donation is aligned with the overall OpenTelemetry project vision and roadmap and has a balanced set of interested contributors and maintainers. The GC is also responsible for driving awareness in the community about the contribution and making sure all interested parties have a chance to object and/or contribute.
- If accepted, the contributing organization – particularly if it's a commercial entity – must formally acknowledge via the GitHub issue that its respective sales and marketing departments have received, understood, and accepted the terms of the [OpenTelemetry marketing guidelines] (https://github.com/open-telemetry/community/blob/main/marketing-guidelines.md).
- Given all of the above, the GitHub issue is closed and the donation moves forward as agreed to by the TC and GC.
OpenTelemetry participates in KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, held three times per year in China, Europe and in North America. Information about these and other community events is available on the CNCF events pages.