Create new semantic-conventions-java repository

[jack-berg]

The opentelemetry-java repo currently publishes an artifact containing generated classes with attributes from the semantic conventions. With the split of semantic conventions from opentelemetry-specification to semantic-conventions, and with the approaching stability of http semantic conventions, we want to split out this code generation to a dedicated repository called semantic-conventions-java. Tracking this issue from opentelemetry-java's side here.

The current process causes confusion because opentelemetry-java publishes new versions monthly, with all artifacts versioned in lockstep. This produces confusing artifact versions, as io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-semconv has versions which are different from the version of semantic conventions used to generate them.

This new repo would publish new versions in lockstep with semantic-conventions.

cc @open-telemetry/java-maintainers @open-telemetry/specs-semconv-approvers

I know I already have the ✅ from the java maintainers. If the semantic convention conventions maintainers agree, I'll go ahead and get started on the new repo.

[Oberon00]

This only works in an ideal world where your Java artifacts make breaking changes and bug-fixes in lockstep with the specification. I am not sure if this is a good idea.
(For some internal convention artifact at Dynatrace, we used such a common version, but a precondition we wanted for that was that we could bump the version of the overall convention in response to a single-language-only convention artifact change as well. This is most likely not the case in OpenTelemetry)

[jack-berg]

This only works in an ideal world where your Java artifacts make breaking changes and bug-fixes in lockstep with the specification. I am not sure if this is a good idea.

I think what you're saying is that we may want to change the code generation logic independently of a bump in the semantic conventions repo. We could accomplish this by having a versioning strategy which is essentially two versions:

io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-semconv:{CODE_GEN_VERSION}_{SEMCONV_VERSION}
// e.g.
io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-semconv:1.0.0_1.21.0

Or something to that effect. But we can't do any of this if the artifact has to be published in lockstep with opentelemetry-java as it is today.

[jack-berg]

I see 👍 from both java maintainers and semantic convention maintainers so I'm going to proceed with setting up the repo and close this issue.

[jack-berg]

See new repository at semantic-conventions-java.