Troubleshooting

Enable debug logging

To see what the tool does during a build, enable debug mode:

otelc --debug go build -o myapp .

Debug output, including a debug.log file, is written to the tool’s working directory (by default a .otelc-build directory in your module). Inspect it to see which rules matched and what instrumentation was injected.

No telemetry is produced

1. Confirm the binary was built through otelc and not plain go build.
2. Confirm your application actually uses a supported library, and that the version you depend on is within the supported range declared by the instrumentation rules.
3. Check the exporter configuration: with OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT unset or wrong, telemetry has nowhere to go. Set OTEL_LOG_LEVEL=debug to surface export errors.
4. Check that the instrumentation wasn’t disabled through OTEL_GO_ENABLED_INSTRUMENTATIONS or OTEL_GO_DISABLED_INSTRUMENTATIONS.

Clean up build artifacts

If a build behaves unexpectedly, remove the artifacts created by previous setup and build phases and rebuild from a clean state:

otelc cleanup

Getting help

• GitHub issues for bugs
• GitHub discussions for questions
• The #otel-go-compt-instr-sig channel on the CNCF Slack