Coordinating the creation/endorsement of a OpenTracing->Zipkin tracer

[cwe1ss]

We've recently released a new version of the OpenTracing C# API that now has parity with Java and therefore can be considered "ready to be used".

I'd like to use this issue to bring everyone together who has been working either on zipkin4net, OpenTracing or a bridge to see if we can join forces somehow to have at least one "official" OpenTracing->Zipkin bridge. I'm using this repository as this project has been selected as the official C# API for Zipkin.

OpenTracing->Zipkin bridges and their contributors:

• Butterfly: @liuhaoyang
• Jasiri.OpenTracing @gideonkorir
• LetsTrace: @grounded042
• PR here in zipkin4net: @fedj
• csharp-netcore: @cwe1ss (Enhanced version of zipkin4net's PR - I've only been using it for my samples)

People who have recently been active in opentracing-csharp and have not yet been mentioned: @Aaronontheweb, @bmermet, @carlosalberto, @dawallin, @Falco20019, @MikeGoldsmith, @ndrwrbgs, @TerribleDev

Contributors to zipkin4net (> 1 commit): @fedj, @klettier, @flodav, @crntn, @bhugot, @anthonywanted, @adriancole, @kerdrek

Some of my questions:

• The existing bridges on nuget.org (Butterfly, Jasiri, LetsTrace) do not use zipkin4net. What are the issues?
• What is the state of the existing bridges? (in development? / used in production?)
• Are any of the bridge authors interested in joining forces/consolidating work?
• Who else is interested in helping?
• What needs to be done to make any of the projects "official" (or at least to have a group of people supporting it)?

Any feedback is appreciated! Also, feel free to /cc other people who would be interested.

[Falco20019]

I recently worked on LetsTrace. It‘s not using zipkin4net since it tries to be an lightweight plugin into LetsTrace which also supports Jaeger/Thrift for its tracer. Right now I‘m working with @grounded042 to get LetsTrace on feature parity with the Java Jaeger client and to make it official (see jaegertracing/jaeger#578)

Right now I prepare to use LetsTrace in production for tracing of gRPC. Have also an grpc interceptor for C# nearly finished which uses your OpenTracing as base (see https://github.com/Falco20019/grpc-opentracing/tree/csharp-experimental).

[codefromthecrypt]

opentracing bridges can go into openzipkin-contrib org; it doesn't make sense to have a bridge there to something besides this project. That would cause even more confusion. FYI openzipkin-contrib may also have other bridges in the future, too. I've considered making a java bridge to census' trace api to help grpc for example. Also, third-party bridges can be listed in the community section of the docs. https://github.com/openzipkin/openzipkin.github.io/blob/master/_data/community_instrumentations.yml Regardless, it would be nice to see more engagement here, though not at the cost of more confusion.

[grounded042]

Our plan is to have a plugin for LetsTrace that will work with Zipkin. We have the beginnings of it, but need to do more before it's up and running.

[cwe1ss]

Some updates:

• LetsTrace has been merged into jaeger-client-csharp some time ago. The library does currently not have a Zipkin transport though.
• There's now also https://github.com/petabridge/Petabridge.Tracing.Zipkin which is a OpenTracing-compatible Zipkin tracer supported by the people behind Akka.NET. As far as I've seen it does not use this library. (cc @Aaronontheweb )
• I've removed my temporary Zipkin tracer from the csharp-netcore project mentioned above.

[codefromthecrypt]

fyi any opentracing bridge to this will be best placed in a contrib library. if history is any lesson, things move at different speeds, in different directions and by folks with different stakes. same thing for census.

another note is I don't think it is in the scope of this repo to promote opentracing or other libraries. currently we use the openzipkin.github.io site to do that.

bottom line is I think the other available tracers can be put on the web site. if a bridge ends up being made for this it can go in contrib either way there is no activity in this repo.

thanks for the follow up all the same

[cwe1ss]

agreed. thank you @adriancole !