| # Logging, Debugging and Telemetry | |
| **Warning: The OpenCensus project is obsolete and was archived on July 31st, | |
| 2023.** This means that any security vulnerabilities that are found will not be | |
| patched. We recommend that you migrate from OpenCensus tracing to | |
| OpenTelemetry, the successor project. See [OpenCensus](#opencensus) below for | |
| details. | |
| Logging, debugging and telemetry all capture data that can be used for | |
| troubleshooting. Logging records specific events and transactions. Debugging | |
| exposes values for immediate analysis. Telemetry is suitable for production use | |
| and can serve both logging and monitoring purposes. Telemetry tracing follows | |
| requests through a system to provide a view of component interactions. Telemetry | |
| metrics collects data for significant performance indicators, offering insights | |
| into a system's health. | |
| ## Logging and debugging | |
| While working with the Go Client Libraries you may run into some situations | |
| where you need a deeper level of understanding about what is going on in order | |
| to solve your problem. Here are some tips and tricks that you can use in these | |
| cases. *Note* that many of the tips in this section will have a performance | |
| impact and are therefore not recommended for sustained production use. Use these | |
| tips locally or in production for a *limited time* to help get a better | |
| understanding of what is going on. | |
| ### Request/Response Logging | |
| To enable logging for all outgoing requests from the Go Client Libraries, set | |
| the environment variable `GOOGLE_SDK_GO_LOGGING_LEVEL` to `debug`. Currently all | |
| logging is at the debug level, but this is likely to change in the future. | |
| *Caution*: Debug level logging should only be used in a limited manner. Debug | |
| level logs contain sensitive information, including headers, request/response | |
| payloads, and authentication tokens. Additionally, enabling logging at this | |
| level will have a minor performance impact. | |
| ### HTTP based clients | |
| All of our auto-generated clients have a constructor to create a client that | |
| uses HTTP/JSON instead of gRPC. Additionally a couple of our hand-written | |
| clients like Storage and Bigquery are also HTTP based. Here are some tips for | |
| debugging these clients. | |
| #### Try setting Go's HTTP debug variable | |
| Try setting the following environment variable for verbose Go HTTP logging: | |
| GODEBUG=http2debug=1. To read more about this feature please see the godoc for | |
| [net/http](https://pkg.go.dev/net/http). | |
| *WARNING*: Enabling this debug variable will log headers and payloads which may | |
| contain private information. | |
| ### gRPC based clients | |
| #### Try setting grpc-go's debug variables | |
| Try setting the following environment variables for grpc-go: | |
| `GRPC_GO_LOG_VERBOSITY_LEVEL=99` `GRPC_GO_LOG_SEVERITY_LEVEL=info`. These are | |
| good for diagnosing connection level failures. For more information please see | |
| [grpc-go's debug documentation](https://pkg.go.dev/google.golang.org/grpc/examples/features/debugging#section-readme). | |
| ## Telemetry | |
| **Warning: The OpenCensus project is obsolete and was archived on July 31st, | |
| 2023.** This means that any security vulnerabilities that are found will not be | |
| patched. We recommend that you migrate from OpenCensus tracing to | |
| OpenTelemetry, the successor project. The default experimental tracing support | |
| for OpenCensus is now deprecated in the Google Cloud client libraries for Go. | |
| See [OpenCensus](#opencensus) below for details. | |
| The Google Cloud client libraries for Go now use the | |
| [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/what-is-opentelemetry/) project. | |
| The transition from OpenCensus to OpenTelemetry is covered in the following | |
| sections. | |
| ### Tracing (experimental) | |
| Apart from spans created by underlying libraries such as gRPC, Google Cloud Go | |
| generated clients do not create spans. Only the spans created by following | |
| hand-written clients are in scope for the discussion in this section: | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/bigquery](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/bigquery) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/bigtable](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/bigtable) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/datastore](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/datastore) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/firestore](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/firestore) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/spanner](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/spanner) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/storage](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/storage) | |
| Currently, the spans created by these clients are for OpenTelemetry. OpenCensus | |
| users are urged to transition to OpenTelemetry as soon as possible, as explained | |
| in the next section. | |
| #### OpenCensus | |
| **Warning: The OpenCensus project is obsolete and was archived on July 31st, | |
| 2023.** This means that any security vulnerabilities that are found will not be | |
| patched. We recommend that you migrate from OpenCensus tracing to | |
| OpenTelemetry, the successor project. The default experimental tracing support | |
| for OpenCensus is now deprecated in the Google Cloud client libraries for Go. | |
| Using the [OpenTelemetry-Go - OpenCensus Bridge](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/otel/bridge/opencensus), you can immediately begin exporting your traces with OpenTelemetry, even while | |
| dependencies of your application remain instrumented with OpenCensus. If you do | |
| not use the bridge, you will need to migrate your entire application and all of | |
| its instrumented dependencies at once. For simple applications, this may be | |
| possible, but we expect the bridge to be helpful if multiple libraries with | |
| instrumentation are used. | |
| On May 29, 2024, six months after the | |
| [release](https://github.com/googleapis/google-cloud-go/releases/tag/v0.111.0) | |
| of experimental, opt-in support for OpenTelemetry tracing, the default tracing | |
| support in the clients above was changed from OpenCensus to OpenTelemetry, and | |
| the experimental OpenCensus support was marked as deprecated. | |
| On December 2nd, 2024, one year after the release of OpenTelemetry support, the | |
| experimental and deprecated support for OpenCensus tracing was removed. | |
| Please note that all Google Cloud Go clients currently provide experimental | |
| support for the propagation of both OpenCensus and OpenTelemetry trace context | |
| to their receiving endpoints. The experimental support for OpenCensus trace | |
| context propagation will be removed soon. | |
| Please refer to the following resources: | |
| * [Sunsetting OpenCensus](https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2023/sunsetting-opencensus/) | |
| * [OpenTelemetry-Go - OpenCensus Bridge](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/otel/bridge/opencensus) | |
| #### OpenTelemetry | |
| The default experimental tracing support for OpenCensus is now deprecated in the | |
| Google Cloud client libraries for Go. | |
| On May 29, 2024, the default experimental tracing support in the Google Cloud | |
| client libraries for Go was changed from OpenCensus to OpenTelemetry. | |
| **Warning: OpenTelemetry-Go ensures | |
| [compatibility](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#compatibility) | |
| with ONLY the current supported versions of the [Go | |
| language](https://go.dev/doc/devel/release#policy). This support may be narrower | |
| than the support that has been offered historically by the Go Client Libraries. | |
| Ensure that your Go runtime version is supported by the OpenTelemetry-Go | |
| [compatibility](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#compatibility) | |
| policy before enabling OpenTelemetry instrumentation.** | |
| Please refer to the following resources: | |
| * [What is OpenTelemetry?](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/what-is-opentelemetry/) | |
| * [Cloud Trace - Go and OpenTelemetry](https://cloud.google.com/trace/docs/setup/go-ot) | |
| * On GCE, [use Ops Agent and OpenTelemetry](https://cloud.google.com/trace/docs/otlp) | |
| ##### Configuring the OpenTelemetry-Go - OpenCensus Bridge | |
| To configure the OpenCensus bridge with OpenTelemetry and Cloud Trace: | |
| ```go | |
| import ( | |
| "context" | |
| "log" | |
| "os" | |
| texporter "github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/opentelemetry-operations-go/exporter/trace" | |
| octrace "go.opencensus.io/trace" | |
| "go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/detectors/gcp" | |
| "go.opentelemetry.io/otel" | |
| "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/bridge/opencensus" | |
| "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/resource" | |
| sdktrace "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/trace" | |
| semconv "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/semconv/v1.7.0" | |
| ) | |
| func main() { | |
| // Create exporter. | |
| ctx := context.Background() | |
| projectID := os.Getenv("GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT") | |
| exporter, err := texporter.New(texporter.WithProjectID(projectID)) | |
| if err != nil { | |
| log.Fatalf("texporter.New: %v", err) | |
| } | |
| // Identify your application using resource detection | |
| res, err := resource.New(ctx, | |
| // Use the GCP resource detector to detect information about the GCP platform | |
| resource.WithDetectors(gcp.NewDetector()), | |
| // Keep the default detectors | |
| resource.WithTelemetrySDK(), | |
| // Add your own custom attributes to identify your application | |
| resource.WithAttributes( | |
| semconv.ServiceNameKey.String("my-application"), | |
| ), | |
| ) | |
| if err != nil { | |
| log.Fatalf("resource.New: %v", err) | |
| } | |
| // Create trace provider with the exporter. | |
| // | |
| // By default it uses AlwaysSample() which samples all traces. | |
| // In a production environment or high QPS setup please use | |
| // probabilistic sampling. | |
| // Example: | |
| // tp := sdktrace.NewTracerProvider(sdktrace.WithSampler(sdktrace.TraceIDRatioBased(0.0001)), ...) | |
| tp := sdktrace.NewTracerProvider( | |
| sdktrace.WithBatcher(exporter), | |
| sdktrace.WithResource(res), | |
| ) | |
| defer tp.Shutdown(ctx) // flushes any pending spans, and closes connections. | |
| otel.SetTracerProvider(tp) | |
| tracer := otel.GetTracerProvider().Tracer("example.com/trace") | |
| // Configure the OpenCensus tracer to use the bridge. | |
| octrace.DefaultTracer = opencensus.NewTracer(tracer) | |
| // Use otel tracer to create spans... | |
| } | |
| ``` | |
| ##### Configuring context propagation | |
| In order to pass options to OpenTelemetry trace context propagation, follow the | |
| appropriate example for the client's underlying transport. | |
| ###### Passing options in HTTP-based clients | |
| ```go | |
| ctx := context.Background() | |
| trans, err := htransport.NewTransport(ctx, | |
| http.DefaultTransport, | |
| option.WithScopes(storage.ScopeFullControl), | |
| ) | |
| if err != nil { | |
| log.Fatal(err) | |
| } | |
| // An example of passing options to the otelhttp.Transport. | |
| otelOpts := otelhttp.WithFilter(func(r *http.Request) bool { | |
| return r.URL.Path != "/ping" | |
| }) | |
| hc := &http.Client{ | |
| Transport: otelhttp.NewTransport(trans, otelOpts), | |
| } | |
| client, err := storage.NewClient(ctx, option.WithHTTPClient(hc)) | |
| ``` | |
| Note that scopes must be set manually in this user-configured solution. | |
| ###### Passing options in gRPC-based clients | |
| ```go | |
| projectID := "..." | |
| ctx := context.Background() | |
| // An example of passing options to grpc.WithStatsHandler. | |
| otelOpts := otelgrpc.WithMessageEvents(otelgrpc.ReceivedEvents) | |
| dialOpts := grpc.WithStatsHandler(otelgrpc.NewClientHandler(otelOpts)) | |
| ctx := context.Background() | |
| c, err := datastore.NewClient(ctx, projectID, option.WithGRPCDialOption(dialOpts)) | |
| if err != nil { | |
| log.Fatal(err) | |
| } | |
| defer c.Close() | |
| ``` | |
| ### Metrics (experimental) | |
| The generated clients do not create metrics. Only the following hand-written | |
| clients create experimental OpenCensus metrics: | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/bigquery](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/bigquery) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/pubsub](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/pubsub) | |
| * [cloud.google.com/go/spanner](https://pkg.go.dev/cloud.google.com/go/spanner) | |
| #### OpenTelemetry | |
| The transition of the experimental metrics in the clients above from OpenCensus | |
| to OpenTelemetry is still TBD. |