Protocol buffer tracing standard

[andrewmclagan]

Apollo has deprecated it's pre-version 3 tracing format in favour of a protobuff implementation based on the operation level.

Which possible solutions should be considered?

Investigate and implement buffered tracing solution as per the reference implementation

Notes

Basically just determining how much interest there is before undertaking such works.

[spawnia]

I am not looking to implement this myself, but would assist in reviewing a pull request and include it in Lighthouse.

[Maxwell2022]

Is that what this issue is about: https://github.com/nuwave/lighthouse/issues/2053 ?

[andrewmclagan]

Looks like a broader compliance with federation, which includes this tracing standard.

[cappuc]

Hi, I'm looking into implementing the new protobuf tracing standard in order to complete apollo federation compatibility, adding the missing federated tracing support.

@spawnia Can I replace the current tracing implementation (which is deprecated by apollo and is no longer supported by either apollo server) or do you want to keep both implementations?

I used the tracing only with federation and in this case it makes sense to use the new one by default since its part of the spec, but I don't know if there are use cases where the old tracing is required

[spawnia]

Can I replace the current tracing implementation (which is deprecated by apollo and is no longer supported by either apollo server) or do you want to keep both implementations?

I don't plan to release a new major version soon, so it would probably be best to implement the new tracing on top - but let's keep the old one as a default for now. We can make this configurable, allowing users to migrate at their own pace, deprecate the old version and remove it in the next major version.