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python.missing_tracing

Observability Low

Detects code without distributed tracing instrumentation, making it difficult to understand request flow and identify bottlenecks.

Why It Matters

Without distributed tracing:

Blind spots in production — Can’t see where time is spent
Slow debugging — No visibility into service interactions
Performance mysteries — Can’t identify slow dependencies
Incident response delays — Finding root cause takes longer

Example

# ❌ Before (no tracing)
async def process_order(order_id: str):
    order = await fetch_order(order_id)
    payment = await charge_payment(order)
    await send_notification(order)
    return order

# ✅ After (with OpenTelemetry tracing)
from opentelemetry import trace

tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)

async def process_order(order_id: str):
    with tracer.start_as_current_span("process_order") as span:
        span.set_attribute("order_id", order_id)

        with tracer.start_as_current_span("fetch_order"):
            order = await fetch_order(order_id)

        with tracer.start_as_current_span("charge_payment"):
            payment = await charge_payment(order)

        with tracer.start_as_current_span("send_notification"):
            await send_notification(order)

        return order

What Unfault Detects

HTTP handlers without tracing spans
External service calls without child spans
Database operations without timing spans
Async task creation without trace context propagation

Auto-Fix

Unfault generates patches that add OpenTelemetry instrumentation:

from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.fastapi import FastAPIInstrumentor
from opentelemetry.instrumentation.requests import RequestsInstrumentor

# Auto-instrument frameworks
FastAPIInstrumentor.instrument_app(app)
RequestsInstrumentor().instrument()

tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)

OpenTelemetry Setup

from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.grpc.trace_exporter import OTLPSpanExporter

# Configure provider
provider = TracerProvider()
processor = BatchSpanProcessor(OTLPSpanExporter())
provider.add_span_processor(processor)
trace.set_tracer_provider(provider)