# Using instrumentation libraries

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/llms.txt)

---

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 Go 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 does not come with OpenTelemetry out of the box, 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 `net/http`](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp)
automatically creates [spans](/docs/concepts/signals/traces/#spans) and
[metrics](/docs/concepts/signals/metrics/) based on the HTTP requests.

## Setup

Each instrumentation library is a package. In general, this means you need to
`go get` the appropriate package. For example, to get the instrumentation
libraries maintained in the
[Contrib repository](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib)
run the following:

```sh
go get go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/{import-path}/otel{package-name}
```

Then configure it in your code based on what the library requires to be
activated.

[Getting Started](../getting-started/) provides an example showing how to set up
instrumentation for a `net/http` server.

## Available packages

A full list of instrumentation libraries available can be found in the
[OpenTelemetry registry](/ecosystem/registry/?language=go&component=instrumentation).

## Next steps

Instrumentation libraries can do things like generate telemetry data for inbound
and outbound HTTP requests, but they don't instrument your actual application.

Enrich your telemetry data by integrating
[custom instrumentation](../instrumentation/) into your code. This supplements
the standard library telemetry, and can offer deeper insights into your running
application.