Consolidate RPC metadata attributes#3169
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trask merged 5 commits intoopen-telemetry:mainfrom Dec 9, 2025
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Pull request overview
This PR consolidates protocol-specific RPC metadata attributes into common, generic RPC attributes. The change promotes reusability across different RPC protocols by renaming rpc.grpc.request.metadata, rpc.connect_rpc.request.metadata to rpc.request.metadata, and their corresponding response metadata attributes to rpc.response.metadata. This is a breaking change that simplifies the semantic conventions and reduces duplication.
Key changes:
- Created new generic
rpc.request.metadataandrpc.response.metadataattributes in the main RPC registry - Deprecated the four protocol-specific metadata attributes (gRPC and Connect RPC variants)
- Updated all span definitions and documentation to reference the new generic attributes
Reviewed changes
Copilot reviewed 7 out of 7 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.
Show a summary per file
| File | Description |
|---|---|
model/rpc/registry.yaml |
Added new generic rpc.request.metadata and rpc.response.metadata attributes with proper type, stability, brief, note, and examples; removed the protocol-specific variants |
model/rpc/spans.yaml |
Updated attribute references in Connect RPC and gRPC span definitions (client and server) to use the new generic metadata attributes |
model/rpc/deprecated/registry-deprecated.yaml |
Added deprecation entries for all four protocol-specific metadata attributes with proper renamed_to references |
docs/rpc/grpc.md |
Updated documentation tables and footnotes to reference the new generic RPC metadata attributes instead of gRPC-specific ones |
docs/rpc/connect-rpc.md |
Updated documentation tables and footnotes to reference the new generic RPC metadata attributes; also fixed example value formatting inconsistency (string to array) |
docs/registry/attributes/rpc.md |
Updated attribute registry to show new generic metadata attributes and moved deprecated attributes to the deprecated section |
.chloggen/rpc-metadata.yaml |
Added changelog entry documenting this breaking change |
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matt-hensley
approved these changes
Dec 8, 2025
joaopgrassi
approved these changes
Dec 9, 2025
Cirilla-zmh
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Fixes #2869
Rename
rpc.grpc.request.metadataandrpc.connect_rpc.request.metadatatorpc.request.metadatarpc.grpc.response.metadataandrpc.connect_rpc.response.metadatatorpc.response.metadata