Customize Your Own OpenTelemetry Collector: An Introduction To OCB

This conference talk introduces the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (OCB), a tool developed by Collector maintainers that allows users to create customized versions of the OpenTelemetry Collector. Learn how OCB works and explore various use cases including creating release pipelines, publishing Docker images, implementing hotfixes for upstream components when immediate changes are needed, and integrating your own components. Discover how to build a Collector distribution tailored to your specific requirements when existing distributions don't include the right components for your needs. The presenters also demonstrate real-world examples of how OCB is used to publish popular Collector distributions, making this a practical guide for anyone looking to customize their observability infrastructure with OpenTelemetry.