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Refine the handling of OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES. #4856

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Refine the handling of OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES. #4856

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33f3dc2
Refine the handling of OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES.
carlosalberto Jan 27, 2026
cda6781
Update specification/resource/sdk.md
carlosalberto Jan 27, 2026
7ec7352
Add CHANGELOG.
carlosalberto Jan 28, 2026
06bf852
Massage the changes.
carlosalberto Jan 30, 2026
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3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions CHANGELOG.md
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Expand Up @@ -29,6 +29,9 @@ release.

### Resource

- Refine the handling of OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES.
([#4856](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/pull/4856))

### Entities

### OpenTelemetry Protocol
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5 changes: 4 additions & 1 deletion specification/resource/sdk.md
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Expand Up @@ -186,7 +186,10 @@ key value pairs, and these are expected to be represented in a format matching
to the [W3C Baggage](https://www.w3.org/TR/baggage/#header-content), except that additional
semi-colon delimited metadata is not supported, i.e.: `key1=value1,key2=value2`.
All attribute values MUST be considered strings and characters outside the
`baggage-octet` range MUST be percent-encoded.
`baggage-octet` range SHOULD be percent-encoded. In the case of errors during the
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@trask trask Jan 28, 2026

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how about

The OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variable will contain a list of key value pairs, represented as key1=value1,key2=value2. All attribute values MUST be considered strings. The , and = characters in keys and values MUST be percent-encoded. Other characters MAY be percent-encoded.

decoding process, the entire environment variable value SHOULD be discarded
and an error SHOULD be reported following the
[Error Handling principles](../error-handling.md#basic-error-handling-principles).

## Resource operations

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