Request to Improve Namespace Detection in GKE Resource Detector

[munagekar]

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Background

• I would like to request improved detection of namespace in the GKE resource detector. Currently it relies on the Namespace Environment Variable being available.

https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/blob/1df0a9d437c51d6ee35a18dc9a02b33e4adbdf6f/detectors/gcp/gke.go#L52

However it is possible to detect this variable from inside the kubernetes pod. For example see the python implementation

https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/opentelemetry-operations-python/blob/f66591e1362dd60982ee9ae511d4c36e63156e17/opentelemetry-resourcedetector-gcp/src/opentelemetry/resourcedetector/gcp_resource_detector/init.py#L78-L86

cc: @dashpole

[munagekar]

I can contribute to the efforts, if required, if you agree with the proposal.

[munagekar]

Previous iterations of GCP resource detection attempted to detect container.name, k8s.pod.name and k8s.namespace.name. When using this detector, you should use this in your Pod Spec to set these using OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES:

The Readme however asks users to set container.name,k8s.pod.name and k8s.namespace.name themselves. However k8s.pod.name and k8s.namespace.name can be detected automatically.

I would instead like to suggest that OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES be used as the primary source of attribute data if specified, but fallback to autodetection otherwise.

[dashpole]

Thats really neat. TIL. I think that makes sense to do, but I don't think it should be done in the GCP detector, since it isn't GCP-specific. Maybe we should integrate that idea into https://github.com/open-telemetry/oteps/pull/195