Observability

BareWire integrates with OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing, metrics, and health checks.

Enabling Observability

builder.Services.AddBareWireObservability(cfg =>
{
    cfg.EnableOpenTelemetry = true;
});

Distributed Tracing

BareWire propagates trace context across message boundaries. Each publish and consume operation creates a span, so you get end-to-end traces across multi-hop workflows.

For example, in the ObservabilityShowcase sample, a single request produces a 3-hop trace:

POST /demo/run
  → DemoOrderCreated (order.created)
    → DemoPaymentProcessed (payment.processed)
      → DemoShipmentDispatched (shipment.dispatched)

Each hop is visible as a child span in your tracing backend (Aspire Dashboard, Jaeger, Zipkin, etc.).

Metrics

BareWire emits the following metrics via OpenTelemetry:

Metric	Description
barewire.messages.published	Counter of published messages
barewire.messages.consumed	Counter of consumed messages
barewire.message.duration	Histogram of message processing duration

Health Checks

BareWire registers health checks that report transport and flow control status:

builder.AddServiceDefaults();  // registers health checks
// ...
app.MapServiceDefaults();      // maps health endpoints

Endpoints:

• /health — combined liveness + readiness
• /health/live — liveness only (no dependency checks)
• /health/ready — full readiness including broker connectivity and flow control

Aspire Dashboard

When running via the Aspire AppHost, traces and metrics are automatically exported to the Aspire Dashboard. No additional configuration is needed — the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable is injected automatically.

dotnet run --project samples/BareWire.Samples.AppHost/

Combining with SAGA and Outbox

Observability works seamlessly with SAGA and outbox. The RabbitMQ sample demonstrates all three together:

builder.Services.AddBareWire(cfg => { /* transport */ });
builder.Services.AddBareWireSaga<OrderSagaState>(options => options.UseSqlite(...));
builder.Services.AddBareWireOutbox(configureDbContext, configureOutbox);
builder.Services.AddBareWireObservability(cfg => { cfg.EnableOpenTelemetry = true; });

See: samples/BareWire.Samples.ObservabilityShowcase/ and samples/BareWire.Samples.RabbitMQ/