Today, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Technical Oversight Committee voted to accept OpenTracing as a third hosted project after Kubernetes and Prometheus. You can find more information on the project in this proposal presented to the TOC recently.
As CNCF builds out multiple paths for adopting cloud native computing, the TOC is looking to unite high quality and relevant projects into the Foundation. Started in late 2015, OpenTracing focuses on making loosely-coupled microservices easier to manage with consistent, expressive, vendor-neutral APIs for distributed tracing and context propagation. It aligns well with CNCF’s goal to significantly increase the overall agility and maintainability of modern applications by making technology ubiquitous and easily available through reliable interfaces.
Programmers use tracing software to better understand performance, reliability, and unexpected behavior in today’s complex distributed systems. As containers and microservice use has increased, the need for a distributed tracing software specifically designed for cloud native environments (modern style architectures) has grown. The primary OpenTracing authors are Ben Sigelman, Yuri Shkuro, Adrian Cole, Mick Semb Wever, and Dominik Honnef.
Check out the OpenTracing’s manifesto from project committer Ben Sigelman @el_bhs. If you want to stay in touch, follow @OpenTracing. And, to learn more about how “tracing puts great power in the hands of developers,” here is a great interview between Priyanka Sharma and OpenTracing contributor Dominik Honnef.
Stay tuned for a blog post from Ben, who will dive deep into the project’s roots and technical makeup. He’ll talk about why OpenTracing joined CNCF and how the tracing landscape is evolving to keep up with changes in modern application development.