Writing a New Integration Package

Here are all the things that go into writing a new Integration Package:

Developer Setup

• Fork the Go Agent.
• Make sure it builds, and the v3/newrelic and v3/internal tests pass.

Research

• Research the library, read the code, come up with different ideas of how we could instrument.
• Discuss the candidates for instrumentation, and choose one.
• Write a prototype spike to see if it’s a viable approach for us and our customers. If it’s not, go back to the previous step.

Development

• Include a go.mod file
• Supportability metric for tracking usage:
  • Add an init function similar to:

   func init() { internal.TrackUsage("integration", "datastore", "redigo") }

• Write good unit tests
• Godocs documentation:
  • Package level doc
  • Method/func level docs
  • Examples (either Godoc style or in the method/func doc)
• Include a full code example
• Use it like a customer would and fix any surprises
• Update README integrations list
• Add CHANGELOG entry
• Create a simple README for the integration directory
• Add testing to GitHub CI workflow

Datastore Specific

• Gather the host/port for instance info metrics

Upon Release

• Update docs site integrations list here
• Update Angler for the new Supportability metric created here
• Add a tag for the new integration package, eg. v3/integrations/nrredis-v7/v1.0.0