Cloud Trace does not display error span status description

[genevieveluyt]

We use SetStatus to set spans to "error" and use the description to include the error message.

Example:

"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/trace"
"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/codes"

span := trace.SpanFromContext(ctx)
span.SetStatus(codes.Error, "My error message")

According to docs

// SetStatus sets the status of the Span in the form of a code and a
// description, provided the status hasn't already been set to a higher
// value before (OK > Error > Unset). The description is only included in a
// status when the code is for an error.

The span correctly shows as an error span in Cloud Trace , but I can't seem to find the description.

It would be very useful for debugging if the status description was visible in the trace!

[dashpole]

Looks like we are sending the status.Description as the "Message". I'll pass this feedback on to the trace team.

[dashpole]

opentelemetry-operations-go/exporter/trace/trace_proto.go

Line 163 in 4f9a944

sp.Status = &statuspb.Status{Code: int32(codepb.Code_UNKNOWN), Message: s.Status().Description}

[dashpole]

Are you sending traces using the OTLP exporter, or are you using the google cloud exporter?

[genevieveluyt]

Hi @dashpole , thanks for looking into this! I believe I am using the google cloud exporter. Here is my trace setup code, running on Cloud Run:

import (
    "cloud.google.com/go/compute/metadata"
    texporter "github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/opentelemetry-operations-go/exporter/trace"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/resource"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/trace"
)

proj, err := metadata.ProjectIDWithContext(ctx)
exporter, err = texporter.New(texporter.WithProjectID(proj))
res, err := resource.New(ctx, resource.WithAttributes(semconv.ServiceNameKey.String("my-service")))
tp := trace.NewTracerProvider(trace.WithBatcher(exporter), trace.WithResource(res))
otel.SetTracerProvider(tp)

Please let me know if you need any more info!