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Enhance writing_exporters.md: Add actionable examples, checklists, and improved structure #2719

@ADITYATIWARI342005

Description

@ADITYATIWARI342005

Description

Proposal:

I would like to significantly improve the writing_exporters.md documentation by adding concrete code examples, clarifying best practices, and introducing a more actionable structure for new and experienced exporter authors.

Motivation

The current writing_exporters.md is comprehensive but can be dense for newcomers and lacks practical, ready-to-use examples in several key sections. Given that this document is a primary reference for anyone building Prometheus exporters, improving its clarity and usability will have a high impact on the community and ecosystem.

Proposed Improvements

  • Add concrete code examples for:
    • Types & Labels (clarifying exporter vs. application labels)
    • Help strings (with troubleshooting context)
    • Scheduling (why exporters should not scrape on their own timers)
    • Exporter landing pages (minimal HTML example)
  • Introduce a quick-start checklist at the end for new exporter authors.
  • Clarify and expand best practices with before/after code snippets.
  • Improve document structure for easier navigation (e.g., section summaries, cross-links to related docs).
  • Add a troubleshooting section for common mistakes and anti-patterns.

Implementation Plan

  1. Refactor the document to group related concepts and add section summaries.
  2. Add new and improved code examples in Go (and/or pseudo-code where appropriate).
  3. Insert a quick-start checklist and a “common mistakes” section.
  4. Cross-link to related documentation (e.g., instrumentation.md, naming.md).
  5. Solicit feedback from exporter maintainers and users for further improvements.

Refrences

[current_structure] https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/writing_exporters/
[expected} https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/getting_started/
[expected (even better)] https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug/debug-cluster/resource-metrics-pipeline/

Request for Feedback

  • - Would maintainers and the community be open to a PR with these improvements?
  • - Are there any specific pain points, requests, or recent exporter patterns you would like to see addressed in this update?

If approved, I will submit the changes as a single, well-structured PR with clear commit history and before/after documentation diffs.

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