Configuration documentation and metadata

In the SIG meeting last week there was a discussion related to configurations, how we track them, and how they are then made available and documented to users.

A few key points:

• The current metadata approach duplicates all the "common" configurations and adds them to each metadata file. This could prove a bit tedious if they are to change in the future and would require updating all the individual metadata files
  • We need to ensure this is scalable/maintainable. We could potentially use references or some other approach for "common" configs
• There is no centralized catalog / reference of all configurations that cover the SDK, agent, contrib etc, that allows for searching/filtering. We have some prototypes with the new explorer, but should look into proper ways to expose this.
  • Some ideas to explore:
    • Add to opentelemetry.io pages/ registry
    • Add to ecosystem explorer
    • Render another yaml file similar to instrumentation-list.yaml
• How to handle documenting for declarative config? do we need something separate for that?

Review the current metadata files, the ecosystem explorer prototypes, and instrumentation-list.yaml to understand how configurations are represented and exposed. The work is not yet scoped to a specific change; done would require a decided, maintainable approach for shared metadata, a searchable catalog, and declarative-configuration documentation.