traces/vendor/go.opentelemetry.io/collector/extension/README.md

General Information

Extensions provide capabilities on top of the primary functionality of the collector. Generally, extensions are used for implementing components that can be added to the Collector, but which do not require direct access to telemetry data and are not part of the pipelines (like receivers, processors or exporters). Example extensions are: Memory Limiter extension that prevents out of memory situations or zPages extension that provides live data for debugging different components.

Supported service extensions (sorted alphabetically):

• Memory Limiter
• zPages

The contributors repository may have more extensions that can be added to custom builds of the Collector.

Ordering Extensions

The order extensions are specified for the service is important as this is the order in which each extension will be started and the reverse order in which they will be shutdown. The ordering is determined in the extensions tag under the service tag in the configuration file, example:

service:
  # Extensions specified below are going to be loaded by the service in the
  # order given below, and shutdown on reverse order.
  extensions: [extension1, extension2]