how to disable the creation of span at all!

[lfj]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When using the Java auto-instrumentation agent, if I set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=none, traces are not exported, but spans are still generated at runtime. My understanding is that this still introduces performance overhead.

If my goal is to collect only metrics, is there a way to fully disable span creation so that no tracing data is produced at all? This would help reduce unnecessary runtime costs.

Describe the solution you'd like

When using the Java auto-instrumentation agent, if I set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=none, traces are not exported, but spans are still generated at runtime. My understanding is that this still introduces performance overhead.

If my goal is to collect only metrics, is there a way to fully disable span creation so that no tracing data is produced at all? This would help reduce unnecessary runtime costs.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

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[jaydeluca]

If my goal is to collect only metrics, is there a way to fully disable span creation so that no tracing data is produced at all?

No, there is not currently an option for this.

I think you might be able to disable the instrumentations you don't want and only selectively enable others, but that can be error prone due to some of the instrumentations having dependencies on each other.

[github-actions]

This issue has been labeled as stale due to lack of activity and needing author feedback. It will be automatically closed if there is no further activity over the next 7 days.

[trask]

hi @lfj!

this can now be accomplished via incubating API:

SdkTracerProviderBuilder builder = ...

// Disable ALL tracers
ScopeConfigurator<TracerConfig> configurator = 
    TracerConfig.configuratorBuilder()
        .setDefault(TracerConfig.disabled())
        .build();

SdkTracerProviderUtil.setTracerConfigurator(builder, configurator);

[github-actions]

This issue has been labeled as stale due to lack of activity and needing author feedback. It will be automatically closed if there is no further activity over the next 7 days.