Span not continued on the client side

[epot]

I am using grpc version 1.22.
I have the following code on the client side:

new ClientTracingInterceptor
                .Builder()
                .withActiveSpanSource(() -> 
                        GlobalTracer.get().activeSpan()
                ).build();

but it does not continue a span that started before. I debugged the code and it seems we are in a different thread than the one that called the client when the lambda is called (so GlobalTracer.get().activeSpan() is null. I am not sure how this is supposed to work.

[malafeev]

you need to provide another implementation of ActiveSpanSource not based on ThreadLocal

[epot]

So I need to keep a reference somehow of the contexts ? 🤔

[malafeev]

I can propose another approach:
would you like to try SpecialAgent: https://github.com/opentracing-contrib/java-specialagent/
it supports grpc and span context propagation between threads.
also you don't need to modify your source code, you just need to add javaagent

[goto1134]

Is it even ok that I have to use an external java agent to run this library?

[malafeev]

This library is not needed if you will use external java agent.
OpenTracing is in deprecation mode.
Please check OpenTelemetry and agent: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java-instrumentation