[scraperhelper] collection interval documentation conflicts with observed timeout behavior

[SSOHEB]

Component(s)

scraper/scraperhelper

Describe the issue you're reporting

While investigating scraperhelper, I noticed that the documented behavior for collection_interval does not appear to match the current implementation.

The documentation generated from metadata.yaml states that collection_interval is used as the scrape context timeout.

However, in the controller implementation, a context deadline is only created when Timeout > 0.

The existing test TestScrapeFuncNoTimeout also verifies that when Timeout is left at its default value, the scrape context has no deadline.

References

Documentation:

• scraperhelper/internal/controller/metadata.yaml
• scraperhelper/config.schema.yaml
• Generated configuration documentation

Implementation:

• scraperhelper/internal/controller/controller.go
• TestScrapeFuncNoTimeout

Expected

The documentation and implementation should describe the same behavior.
If the current implementation is intended, the documentation should be updated.
If the documentation reflects the intended behavior, then the implementation may need investigation.

I'd be happy to prepare a PR once it's clear whether this should be resolved as a documentation update or an implementation change.

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[Varadahir]

Hi! I'm a fresher interested in contributing to OpenTelemetry.
I'd like to work on this documentation fix for collection_interval.
Any guidance on where to find the relevant files or how to approach this? Thanks!

[SSOHEB]

Hi! I'm a fresher interested in contributing to OpenTelemetry. I'd like to work on this documentation fix for collection_interval. Any guidance on where to find the relevant files or how to approach this? Thanks!

Hi varadahir ! the best approach is to go read the documents understand the high level design of the project then pick one area and go deeper in understanding it, if you wish to find bugs, for documentation prs you can go through good first issues on the issues tab ! Or read the documents yourself spend time and find issues ! Raise the issues, talk with maintainers about the issue on slack !

you're looking at the collection_interval documentation issue, I'd first read the scraperhelper documentation and then trace where collection_interval is defined and consumed in the code. Compare the documented behavior with the actual implementation and existing tests before deciding what needs to change. This is also a good investigation to find issues and raise pull requests after solving it, I mostly do this