Specifying Histogram Buckets - without views

[coxley]

Problem Statement

Example referenced: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/main/example/view/main.go#L49-L60

I've been referencing the Go API docs, source code, and example usages for the last day and from what I can tell "Views" are the only way to specify buckets per histogram.

1. Is this true?
2. If this is true, can someone clarify why?

I know the project has been against providing default histogram boundaries because the meaning changes based on what's being measured. But if views are the only way to do it — and they are attached to your main MeterProvider — then I'm not sure how to define boundaries alongside creating a single histogram.

The reason this matters for me is our setup for exporting metrics and defining metrics are very far apart.

Thanks for your time.

[Aneurysm9]

This is a common request and something we would love to support. Unfortunately, the OTel metrics specification does not have allowances for configuration of this type. There has been discussion of a "hints" API that would allow for specifying a suggested default view for an instrument when it is created, but so far no specification language that we could use to create an implementation. See open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification#2229 for one such discussion.