Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Java pulls in the the OpenTelemetry Java Instrumentation repository. As a result it cannot and will not mark anything stable, meaning supported without breaking changes, unless OpenTelemetry has marked it as stable or it is not specific to OpenTelemetry and is marked stable by some other means (for example the GDI specification).
As a concrete example, the 1.0 Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Java release will apply to the tracing signal and the tracing components OpenTelemetry marked stable in its 1.0 release as well as the components marked as stable in the GDI specification 1.0 release. Some non-exhaustive examples of components that are not stable in the 1.0 release, meaning breaking changes may be introduced, include OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, automatic instrumentation libraries, and the metric signal.
The project follows Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. This means
that all artifacts have a version of the format MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH
.
- No backwards-incompatible changes will be made unless incrementing the
MAJOR
version number. - Most releases will be made by incrementing the
MINOR
version. - Patch releases will be made by incrementing the
PATCH
version.
The version number is not kept in sync with the OpenTelemetry Java project, however the changelog will make it clear what version of OpenTelemetry Java a version is based against.
For stable components, backwards-incompatible changes will be avoided. If they
are necessary, the MAJOR
version of the artifact will be incremented.
This can occur in situations including:
- OpenTelemetry Instrumentation for Java breaking change - please see upstream repository for their versioning policy
- Change in a Splunk-managed configuration property or code
In the latter case, we will first deprecate (at least one release earlier)
before introducing the change, so that customers can prepare accordingly.
Experimental features, such as metrics, MAY be changed in a backwards
incompatible way between MINOR
versions.
All the changes are to be communicated in the changelog.
Splunk is committed to support the customers using this distribution. All major versions will get critical (for example security) patches for one year after the next major release. Feature development will stop on a major release once the next major release is introduced.
Currently, the OpenTelemetry Instrumentation for Java
is released on a
monthly cadence. We strive to release the Splunk distribution with 2
working days after the upstream.