Context:

• Declarative config only adds schema properties fro concepts described in the spec or semantic conventions: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-configuration/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#what-properties-are-part-of-schema
• Semantic conventions has sdk-metrics under active development
• In java (and potentially other repos), we had internal SDK metrics prior to the current semantic convention work. To accommodate this change without breaking users, we introduced APIs where users can select the version of internal SDK metrics they want emitted.

There are open issues in opentelemetry-configuration (open-telemetry/opentelemetry-configuration#500) and opentelemetry-java (open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java#7928) trying to explore ways where users can specify the version of their internal SDK metrics via declarative config.

This seems like a problem other SDK maintainers are likely to face. If semantic-conventions adds guidance that the version of internal SDK metrics should be configurable, we could take this from a language specific solution like:

file_format: 1.0.0-rc.3
...
instrumentation/development:
  java:
    sdk_internal:
      telemetry_version: latest

To a language agnostic solution like:

file_format: 1.0.0-rc.3
...
instrumentation/development:
  general:
    sdk_metrics:
      telemetry_version: latest