open-telemetry / open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ruby

Make instrument name conflict detection case-insensitive

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bug good first issue metrics spec-compliance spec:stable
Dominant language
Ruby
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606
Forks
301
Avg merge
3d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
42

Description

Spec requirement

Instrument names are case-insensitive; a second registration differing only by case MUST reuse the first-seen name and log a message (sdk.md:1017-1031).

Current behavior

@instrument_registry is a plain Ruby Hash keyed by the literal (case-sensitive) name string (meter.rb:32,258-260 (permalink)), so create_counter("requestCount") followed by create_counter("RequestCount") registers two independent instruments instead of being detected as the same name under case-insensitive comparison.

Suggested fix

Normalize the registry key (e.g. downcase) when checking for an existing instrument, while preserving and reusing the first-seen name's original casing, and log a message on the case-differing collision.

Related rows in SPEC_COMPLIANCE_METRICS.md

SDK-37

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in metrics_api/lib/opentelemetry/metrics/meter.rb, especially the @instrument_registry declaration and the lookup around lines 258-260. Compare the behavior with SDK-37 in SPEC_COMPLIANCE_METRICS.md and the linked metrics SDK requirement. Done means case-only duplicate names reuse the first-seen casing and emit the required collision message.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
observability
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
78/100

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