Add Device (Mobile) and OS Version Resource Semantic Attributes

[Sherlouk]

Fixes #1499

Hey folks 👋

Apologies, I'm not fully clued up on the running process of adding new semantic attributes, only just starting to contribute to OpenTelemetry. I've created this pull request based on the suggestions of the issue above as well as my own beliefs - but I'm more hoping this will prompt a conversation. Please let me know if there's a better way to go about this.

Changes

All changes are purely additive, no breaking changes.

OS Additions

I've added an operating system name attribute, I believe this to be different enough to the existing os.type to justify its own attribute. While os.type will specify a more generalised "Linux" value (in this example), os.name can be the specific distro such as Ubuntu or Fedora. In a mobile world, from which I'm from, the os.name allows us to distinguish between multiple Darwin based Apple OS's such as iOS and watchOS.

I've also added an os.version value. This is intended to be machine readable and to follow the existing standards of what a version attribute should be.

Device Additions

I've added a device.model value which is the machine readable model identifier of the device. Importantly this is not necessarily the same as the promotional or market/consumer friendly name - though this could be an optional extra attribute if people think it's suitable. The reason I've opted for this method is because on both iOS and Android it is not currently possible to get the market model name without large switch statements which become quickly out of date - it is more feasible to have mapping logic (through a processing pipeline) at the collector level or indeed at the visualisation layer.

I've also added a device.id value which represents a unique device identifier.

[bryce-b]

As a bias iOS developer, I like these changes. OS version is a critical metric for mobile developers in understanding their customers' usage, and in understanding/debugging potential issues. Being able machine parse os version in mobile apps is pretty indispensable.

[Sherlouk]

Updated to hopefully address some of the ideas mentioned above 🙂

[github-actions]

This PR was marked stale due to lack of activity. It will be closed in 7 days.

[Sherlouk]

Still very keen to get this merged, just unsure on next steps - can anybody advise? 🙂 Thanks

[carlosalberto]

@Sherlouk Maybe this?

maybe we can just outline the exact value that needs to be used on a set of devices. I'm guessing that means starting with 2, iOS and Android - and we add text that this id MUST NOT be filled on other devices until the specification has been added for how to fill it.

[carlosalberto]

@bryce-b mentioned he started trying out OTel Java with Android, so he may have an opinion about this matter.

[github-actions]

This PR was marked stale due to lack of activity. It will be closed in 7 days.

[Sherlouk]

Attached new wording above, let me know if it's suitable and I'll update PR 👍

[anuraaga]

Just to confirm, are there APIs available on iOS and Android to provide the identifier and the name? If only one can be provided and the other would require a map of sort, there wouldn't be a need to include it in telemetry I guess

[Sherlouk]

It all depends on the platform and application. The device name is unlikely (but not impossible) to be specified for iOS since it's difficult to maintain, but other platforms may make this a lot easier. The inverse can also be true. Both have their purpose, in my opinion.

[carlosalberto]

We are ready to merge. We can iterate as we go. Could you please update the CHANGELOG entry to be in the current unreleased cycle @Sherlouk ? so sorry for that, just realized it now ;(

[Sherlouk]

No worries, updated 👍