Changing TraceId/SpanId in existing traces

[opsmartin]

Hello,

Is it possible to somehow set the TraceId attribute in existing spans?
I have noticed one of the OTTL examples shows how to update SpanId in existing spans. I tried to analogously set the TraceId, but the TraceId in the span object did not get updated. Curiously, the TraceId in the attached links object did get updated.

I see the documentation states that SpanContext objects are immutable. Is this the underlying reason, and is there any way around it?

Context: In my use case, I need to "inherit" traces from a service relying on the W3C traceparent header, but they also wrongly have rely on their OpenTelemetry TraceId so I need re-set it from the traceparent header.

Thank you