# Using instrumentation libraries

When you develop an app, you might use third-party libraries and frameworks to
accelerate your work. If you then instrument your app using OpenTelemetry, you
might want to avoid spending additional time to manually add traces, logs, and
metrics to the third-party libraries and frameworks you use.

Many libraries and frameworks already support OpenTelemetry or are supported
through OpenTelemetry
[instrumentation](/docs/concepts/instrumentation/libraries/), so that they can
generate telemetry you can export to an observability backend.

If you are instrumenting an app or service that use third-party libraries or
frameworks, follow these instructions to learn how to use natively instrumented
libraries and instrumentation libraries for your dependencies.

## Use natively instrumented libraries

If a library comes with OpenTelemetry support by default, you can get traces,
metrics, and logs emitted from that library by adding and setting up the
OpenTelemetry SDK with your app.

The library might require some additional configuration for the instrumentation.
Go to the documentation for that library to learn more.
{{__hugo_ctx/}}






> [!IMPORTANT] Help wanted
>
> As of today, we don't know about any Erlang/Elixir library that has
> OpenTelemetry natively integrated. If you are aware of such a library, [let us
> know][new-issue].





[new-issue]:
  https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io/issues/new/choose
{{__hugo_ctx/}}



## Use instrumentation libraries

If a library doesn't include OpenTelemetry support, you can use
[instrumentation libraries](/docs/specs/otel/glossary/#instrumentation-library)
to generate telemetry data for a library or framework.

For example,
[the instrumentation library for Ecto](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-erlang-contrib/tree/main/instrumentation/opentelemetry_ecto)
automatically creates [spans](/docs/concepts/signals/traces/#spans) based on
queries.

## Setup

Each instrumentation library is distributed as a Hex package. To install an
instrumentation, add the dependency to your `mix.exs` file. For example:

```elixir
def deps do
  [
    {:opentelemetry_{package}, "~> 1.0"}
  ]
end
```

Where `{package}` is the name of the instrumentation.

Note that some instrumentation libraries might have prerequisites. Check the
documentation of each instrumentation library for further instructions.

## Available instrumentation libraries

For a full list of instrumentation libraries, see the
[list of Hex packages](https://hex.pm/packages?search=opentelemetry&sort=recent_downloads).

You can also find more instrumentations available in the
[registry](/ecosystem/registry/?language=erlang&component=instrumentation).

## Next steps

After you have set up instrumentation libraries, you might want to add your own
[instrumentation](/docs/languages/erlang/instrumentation) to your code, to
collect custom telemetry data.

You might also want to configure an appropriate exporter to
[export your telemetry data](/docs/languages/erlang/exporters) to one or more
telemetry backends.