README.md

lightstep-tracer-python

The LightStep distributed tracing library for Python.

Installation

apt-get install python-dev
pip install lightstep

Developer Setup

Prerequisites

• PyEnv

pyenv install 2.7.15
pyenv install 3.4.9
pyenv install 3.5.6
pyenv install 3.6.6
pyenv install 3.7.0
pyenv local 2.7.15 3.4.9

• Tox

tox

• Run the examples:

source .tox/py37/bin/activate
python examples/nontrivial/main.py

• Python-Modernize

Only required for LightStep developers

pip install modernize

• Protobuf Python Compiler

Only required for LightStep developers

brew install protobuf

• Generating the proto code

cd ..
git clone https://github.com/googleapis/googleapis.git
git clone https://github.com/lightstep/lightstep-tracer-common.git
cd lightstep-tracer-python
make proto

Getting Started with Tracing

Please see the example programs for examples of how to use this library. In particular:

• Trivial Example shows how to use the library on a single host.
• Context in Headers shows how to pass a TraceContext through HTTP headers.

Or if your python code is already instrumented for OpenTracing, you can simply switch to LightStep's implementation with:

import opentracing
import lightstep

if __name__ == "__main__":
  opentracing.tracer = lightstep.Tracer(
    component_name='your_microservice_name',
    access_token='{your_access_token}')

  with opentracing.tracer.start_active_span('TestSpan') as scope:
    scope.span.log_event('test message', payload={'life': 42})

  opentracing.tracer.flush()

Thrift

When using apache thrift rpc, make sure to both disable use_http by setting it to False as well as enabling use_thrift.

return lightstep.Tracer(
    ...
    use_http=False,
    use_thrift=True)

This library is the LightStep binding for OpenTracing. See the OpenTracing Python API for additional detail.