opentelemetry-proto

This package provides the core Protocol Buffer definitions for OpenTelemetry metrics, traces, and logs. In practice, it's a foundational dependency that mostly stays out of your way. The generated Python classes are straightforward to work with when you need to construct or parse OTLP payloads directly, though most users won't interact with these APIs directly—they're consumed by the opentelemetry-exporter-otlp packages.

From a security perspective, the package is lean and focused. It's purely data structures with no network code, authentication logic, or complex dependencies beyond protobuf itself. This narrow scope limits attack surface significantly. The generated code doesn't perform input validation beyond protobuf's inherent type checking, so if you're manually constructing messages, you'll need to validate data at your application layer.

The main friction point is version management. OpenTelemetry SDK versions have strict compatibility requirements with specific proto versions, and mismatches manifest as cryptic serialization errors at runtime rather than import-time failures. Always pin versions carefully and test upgrades in staging.

This package provides the generated Python protobuf definitions for OpenTelemetry's wire protocol. In production, it's been stable and performant - the serialization/deserialization is efficient and memory usage is predictable. The protobuf definitions are well-structured and align perfectly with the OTLP spec, making debugging wire-level issues straightforward when you need to inspect payloads.

The main operational consideration is that it's an indirect dependency through the opentelemetry-exporter-otlp packages. Breaking changes are rare since it tracks the official proto definitions, but version mismatches between exporters and this package can cause cryptic serialization errors. The generated code is clean and type-hinted, which helps catch issues at development time.

Resource-wise, it adds about 2-3MB to your deployment size with the protobuf definitions. Runtime overhead is minimal - we've observed negligible CPU impact from serialization even at high throughput (10k+ spans/sec). The package handles backward compatibility well, though you need to be mindful of your protobuf runtime version to avoid subtle field encoding issues.

This package provides the raw protobuf definitions for OpenTelemetry data structures. In practice, you'll rarely interact with it directly unless you're building custom exporters or working on OpenTelemetry infrastructure itself. Most developers should use the higher-level SDKs like opentelemetry-sdk instead.

When you do need it, the learning curve is steep. The documentation is sparse and assumes deep familiarity with both protobuf and OpenTelemetry concepts. Error messages are generic protobuf errors that don't provide much context. I spent hours debugging serialization issues because field mappings aren't well documented - you end up reading the .proto files directly on GitHub.

The package itself is stable and auto-generated from the OpenTelemetry specification, so it stays current. However, there's minimal community content - Stack Overflow questions are rare and GitHub issues often get redirected to other repos. If you're implementing a custom exporter, be prepared to reverse-engineer examples from existing exporters rather than following clear tutorials.