semantic-conventions v1.45.0 Week: Span Type Renames, HPA Attribute Fix and v2 Entity Cleanup

open-telemetry/semantic-conventions is the shared registry of attribute, metric, span and entity names used across OpenTelemetry. In the last week it prepared v1.45.0 and landed several breaking edits. The headline is a rename of span types to a single {area}.{kind}.{name} pattern.

I looked at 18 commits from the past week. About half are real model changes. The rest is dependency bumps and link fixes.

Span types renamed to area, kind, name

The biggest change is harmonizing span types with metric names (#4289), labeled breaking. The changelog entry says span types now use {area}.{kind}.{name}, and the kind is dropped for internal spans. Span refinement IDs were updated to match.

This touched many docs, from docs/db/dynamodb.md to the CI/CD and CLI span pages. Examples in the weaver filter list show the new shape: http.client, http.server, db.client, faas.timer.server and cicd.pipeline.task.internal.

A follow up, documenting the span type conventions (#4290), explains the rule for people who write new span definitions.

If your tooling keys on span refinement IDs from the registry, check them. Span names on the wire are a separate matter, so read the docs before assuming anything changed there.

Weaver policy exceptions move to one file

The policy exceptions change (#4305) moved exceptions out of model annotations and into finding filters in .weaver.toml. The file was the most touched path of the week, with 6 commits.

Each filter now carries a TODO pointing at an issue. A small example of the shape:

[[policy.finding_filters]]
exclude = ["naming_convention_metric_namespace_collision"]
signal_type = "metric"
signal_names = ["hw.battery.charge", "hw.cpu.speed", "hw.fan.speed"]

The exceptions are now easy to audit in one place. It also shows the debt: the hw.* metrics that double as namespaces for *.limit metrics, and a few dotnet and kestrel metrics with lower stability attributes.

v2 entity removals and additions

Several v2 commits trim the entity model:

The removals and additions read as one cleanup of the entity list, which the earlier weaver filters had been excusing. Related docs live in docs/registry/entities/README.md. I would not read more into the direction than the commits state.

Smaller changes that still matter

What to watch

  • Instrumentation libraries and backends: check any code that matches on span type IDs or the old HPA attribute names.
  • The TODO list in .weaver.toml is the practical backlog for stability and naming cleanup.
  • Expect more v2 entity work, since the commits keep landing in that area.

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