Undeprecation request for the AWS X-Ray Sampler

[jj22ee]

Problem Statement

The X-Ray Sampler was originally deprecated due to lack of ownership. This issue is to request for the sampler to be brought back into the OTel Go Contrib repo.

• See issue Deprecate and remove go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/samplers/aws/xray #5554 for context of its deprecation and removal.

Proposed Solution

Previously, the sampler was deprecated because of a lack of ownership of the component.
I can commit to being its owner as I have a lot of X-Ray Sampler implementation knowledge (have e2e integration test setup and implemented X-Ray sampler in 2 other languages). I also recently became a CNCF project member.

One of the reasons to continue having the X-Ray Sampler hosted in the OTel Contrib repo is to allow the X-Ray Sampler to be available via the OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER Environment Variable when that Environment Variable is supported in the future. This would also help support this sampler to be available for future zero-code auto-instrumentation.

• https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/sdk-configuration/general/#otel_traces_sampler

[dmathieu]

I would recommend setting up the sampler on your own GitHub account instead.
When we add support for the OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER variable, we can make it rely on repositories from any org, or work with you towards moving it back here.

The main reason is that we ask folks to show an understanding and commitment on an module before they take its ownership. We can't do that here, since the module has already been removed.

[jj22ee]

When we add support for the OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER variable, we can make it rely on repositories from any org, or work with you towards moving it back here.

Thanks, this is good to know. I'll discuss with my team the option of hosting the sampler in an AWS repo, at least while there is no support for OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER.

[jj22ee]

Since you mention that the option of moving the sampler back here is still open in the future when OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER Env Var is available, can I ask why this is not an option before then? Is it too soon to undeprecate the module after its removal?

[dmathieu]

No, it's more about showing intent of ownership. If you maintain a module for a while, it's much easier to discuss moving it back, since we can see the work you've been doing on it.

It may also make sense to keep it on an AWS org though, as that would give you full ownership of that code, including releases calendar, PR reviews and decisions on who is a maintainer.
If the module is in this repository, while being a code owner, you still depend on our merges, and our release calendar.