Using the OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation NuGet package

When to use the NuGet package

Use the NuGet package in the following scenarios:

1. You control the application build but not the machine/container where the application is running.
2. Support instrumentation of self-contained applications.
3. Facilitate developer experimentation with automatic instrumentation through NuGet packages.
4. Solve version conflicts between the dependencies used by the application and the automatic instrumentation.

Limitations

While NuGet packages are a convenient way to deploy automatic instrumentation, they can't be used in all cases. The most common reasons for not using NuGet packages include the following:

1. You can't add the package to the application project. For example, the application is from a third party that can't add the package.
2. Reduce disk usage, or the size of a virtual machine, when multiple applications to be instrumented are installed in a single machine. In this case you can use a single deployment for all .NET applications running on the machine.
3. A legacy application that can't be migrated to the SDK-style project.

Using the NuGet packages

To automatically instrument your application with the OpenTelemetry .NET Automatic Instrumentation add the OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation package to your project:

dotnet add [<PROJECT>] package OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation

If the application references packages that can be instrumented, but require other packages for the instrumentation to work, the build will fail and prompt you to either add the missing instrumentation package or to skip the instrumentation of the corresponding package:

~packages/opentelemetry.autoinstrumentation.buildtasks/1.0.2/build/OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation.BuildTasks.targets(29,5): error : OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation: add a reference to the instrumentation package 'MongoDB.Driver.Core.Extensions.DiagnosticSources' version 1.3.0 or add 'MongoDB.Driver.Core' to the property 'SkippedInstrumentations' to suppress this error.