Opentelemetry-js: Rename plugin to instrumentation

[dyladan]

Looks like the spec is trying to rally around a single term for instrumentation libraries. We've been using plugin, but it looks like they want to use instrumentation.

I don't think we necessarily need to rename existing packages (@open-telemetry/specs-approvers pls confirm or deny?), but we should update all docs, readmes, examples to use the new terminology, and all new packages created moving forward should use the term instrumentation.

Spec PR https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/pull/539

[rezakrimi]

@dyladan I'm an intern at Google working on creating plugins for collecting metrics on web apps. Is it safe to assume that they should be called 'instrumentation` as well?

[dyladan]

The term used by specification is "instrumentation", but we've used "plugin" in this repo. For now the terms are basically interchangeable, but I believe we will want to use "instrumentation" for new modules.

[dyladan]

@mayurkale22 WDYT

[mayurkale22]

I would prefer to use 'instrumentation' for new modules and do follow up PR to change all existing plugins.

[dyladan]

@michaelgoin please comment so i can assign you

[michaelgoin]

commenting so it can be assigned.

[reyang]

FYI in .NET and Python we renamed all the packages to use instrumentation:

• https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/tree/master/src
• https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python/tree/master/instrumentation

[obecny]

@michaelgoin hey just wanted to ask what is the current status of this, thx

[michaelgoin]

Hey @obecny, there were a few plugin changes in-play so I held off on this a bit and then got busy.

I'm probably going to hand this off to a coworker to be done soon. Otherwise, I'll tackle soon so it doesn't hold things up.

[michaelgoin]

@obecny

Is there any preference between the two possible conventions?

1. opentelemetry-instrumentation-[item]
2. opentelemetry-[item]-instrumentation

I'd normally lean towards option 1, as that is closer to the mostly used existing standard (opentelemetry-plugin-[item]) and leaves the differentiating item til the end. That being said, it looks like the Contrib repo has some instrumentation that already attempted to use the new naming style that are in the form of 2. For example: opentelemetry-hapi-instrumentation.

[dyladan]

Option 1 allows all instrumentations to be grouped together when in a sorted list with other types of packages. It also follows established naming convention of opentelemetry-{component type}-{name} used by other component types like exporters, context managers, and propagators.

[michaelgoin]

Agreed, just wasn't sure if there was specific direction that resulted in 2. for those contrib libraries.

Sounds like I'll move forward with 1.

[michaelgoin]

@dyladan @obecny I'm unassigned myself from this item so someone else can pick it up. I haven't been able to be as plugged in lately to maintain context and don't want to hold things up further.