regression: typing error with start_as_current_span on Python<3.10

[PietroPasotti]

I suspect #3633 broke type checkers' ability to inspect the signature of start_as_current_span.

Describe your environment
python 3.11
opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-http==1.24.0
pyright==1.1.331

Steps to reproduce
run pyright on code using tracer.start_as_current_span(name) or tracer.start_as_current_span(name=name)

What is the expected behavior?
nothing :)

What is the actual behavior?
error: No parameter named "name" (reportGeneralTypeIssues)
or
error: Expected 0 positional arguments (reportGeneralTypeIssues)

Additional context
Probably introduced by #3633

[xrmx]

@PietroPasotti thanks for reporting, any idea on how to fix that?

[PietroPasotti]

Sorry but no, I looked a bit into it but I'm not familiar enough with ParamSpec to be useful. Will take another look if I have time next week.

[pmcollins]

@PietroPasotti do you get the error when you run pyright against docs/examples/auto-instrumentation/client.py on latest main? I'm getting a different error, but not one for start_as_current_span:

auto-instrumentation % pyright client.py
/Users/x/python/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python/docs/examples/auto-instrumentation/client.py
  /Users/x/python/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python/docs/examples/auto-instrumentation/client.py:30:29 - error: Cannot access member "add_span_processor" for type "TracerProvider"
    Member "add_span_processor" is unknown (reportAttributeAccessIssue)
1 error, 0 warnings, 0 informations 

[jenshnielsen]

@PietroPasotti does this happen for you with 3.11. I am seeing a similar issue with 3.9 and older microsoft/Qcodes#5899

I believe the 3.9 issue is caused by typing.ParamSpec not existing on 3.9 which results in the type effectivly just being a string that would never type check with 3.9. Normally I would suggest that opentelemetry should depend on typing_extensions and use the backported version for older python versions but I am not sure if that is against some policy?

For 3.11 I guess it could be an issue specific to an older patch version. Which exact version are you running? I think there may have been some fixes to paramspec in the patch versions. Note also that the version of pyright that you are using is fairly old. Latest version is 1.1.358. Could you try with a newer one?

[PietroPasotti]

tried with pyright 1.1.358, the error is different but on the same line.
Now it gives:

error: Expected 0 positional arguments (reportCallIssue)

on tracer.start_as_current_span(name)

[PietroPasotti]

Modifying the source to import ParamSpec from typing_extensions fixes it.
that's obviously not a solution for the issue, but it might be useful debugging info :)

[jenshnielsen]

@PietroPasotti Which exact version of python 3.11 are you using. Looks like there were bugfixes to Paramspec in 3.11.1 and 3.11.3
which may be the reason

https://docs.python.org/release/3.11.9/whatsnew/changelog.html#python-3-11-9

[PietroPasotti]

3.11.8

[dimaqq]

Edit: I was wrong, this is not dependent on Python interpreter version, rather on Python version setting in pyright.

[dimaqq]

Minimum Reproducer

# example.py
import opentelemetry.trace
tracer = opentelemetry.trace.get_tracer(__name__)
with tracer.start_as_current_span("some label here"): ...

# pyproject.toml
[tool.pyright]
pythonVersion = "3.9"

🦐/c/otel-bug> uvx --with opentelemetry-api==1.29.0 --with pyright pyright example.py
/code/otel-bug/example.py
  /code/otel-bug/example.py:3:35 - error: Expected 0 positional arguments (reportCallIssue)
1 error, 0 warnings, 0 informations

Varying pythonVersion:

• 3.0 ✅
• 3.1 ✅
• 3.2 ✅
• 3.3 ✅
• 3.4 ✅
• 3.5 ❌
• 3.6 ❌
• 3.7 ❌
• 3.8 ❌
• 3.9 ❌
• 3.10 ✅
• 3.11 ✅
• 3.12 ✅
• 3.13 ✅
• 3.14 ✅

Varying opentelemetry-api version:

• 1.20.0 ✅
• 1.21.0 ✅
• 1.22.0 ✅
• 1.23.0 ✅
• 1.24.0 ❌
• 1.25.0 ❌
• 1.26.0 ❌
• 1.27.0 ❌
• 1.28.0 ❌
• 1.28.1 ❌
• 1.28.2 ❌
• 1.29.0 ❌

[dimaqq]

@PietroPasotti or maintainers, would you consider editing the bug headline to include something like "regression on Python<3.10" ?