Is there a more flexible way to specify OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES?

[ncabanis]

I am looking for a way to specify the K8s conventions, like k8s.node.name, k8s.namespace.name or k8s.pod.name. As I understood, the only possibility is to specify these fields comma separated within the OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES parameter.

Is there not a more flexible way, e.g. by specifying K8S_NODE_NAME or maybe OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES_K8S_NODE_NAME?

This composite field makes it difficult to provide via an K8s deployment descriptor.

[mateuszrzeszutek]

Hey @ncabanis ,

Unfortunately right now there's no way to specify resource attributes in separate env vars.

In general, currently we support the following 3 ways of adding resource attributes:

• the OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variable;
• the otel.resource.attributes Java system property;
• and a custom ResourceProvider implementation - this one requires making a custom javaagent distro though (see How do I add a custom SpanProcessor to an auto instrumented service? #2763 for similar inquiry). We're currently working on making this more accessible.