Understanding the javaagent components

The javaagent jar can logically be divided into 3 parts:

  • Modules that live in the system class loader
  • Modules that live in the bootstrap class loader
  • Modules that live in the agent class loader

Modules that live in the system class loader

javaagent module

This module consists of single class io.opentelemetry.javaagent.OpenTelemetryAgent which implements Java instrumentation agent. This class is loaded during application startup by application classloader. Its sole responsibility is to push agent‘s classes into JVM’s bootstrap classloader and immediately delegate to io.opentelemetry.javaagent.bootstrap.AgentInitializer (now in the bootstrap class loader) class from there.

Modules that live in the bootstrap class loader

javaagent-bootstrap module

io.opentelemetry.javaagent.bootstrap.AgentInitializer and a few other classes that live in the bootstrap class loader but are not used directly by auto-instrumentation

instrumentation-api and javaagent-api modules

These modules contain support classes for actual instrumentations to be loaded later and separately. These classes should be available from all possible classloaders in the running application. For this reason the javaagent module puts all these classes into JVM's bootstrap classloader. For the same reason this module should be as small as possible and have as few dependencies as possible. Otherwise, there is a risk of accidentally exposing this classes to the actual application.

instrumentation-api contains classes that are needed for both library and auto-instrumentation, while javaagent-api contains classes that are only needed for auto-instrumentation.

Modules that live in the agent class loader

javaagent-tooling, javaagent-extension-api modules and instrumentation submodules

Contains everything necessary to make instrumentation machinery work, including integration with ByteBuddy and actual library-specific instrumentations. As these classes depend on many classes from different libraries, it is paramount to hide all these classes from the host application. This is achieved in the following way:

  • When javaagent module builds the final agent, it moves all classes from instrumentation submodules, javaagent-tooling and javaagent-extension-api modules into a separate folder inside final jar file, calledinst. In addition, the extension of all class files is changed from class to classdata. This ensures that general classloaders cannot find nor load these classes.
  • When io.opentelemetry.javaagent.bootstrap.AgentInitializer is invoked, it creates an instance of io.opentelemetry.javaagent.bootstrap.AgentClassLoader, loads an io.opentelemetry.javaagent.tooling.AgentInstaller from that AgentClassLoader and then passes control on to the AgentInstaller (now in the AgentClassLoader). The AgentInstaller then installs all of the instrumentations with the help of ByteBuddy. Instead of using agent classloader all agent classes could be shaded and used from the bootstrap classloader. However, this opens de-serialization security vulnerability and in addition to that the shaded classes are harder to debug.

The complicated process above ensures that the majority of auto-instrumentation agent's classes are totally isolated from application classes, and an instrumented class from arbitrary classloader in JVM can still access helper classes from bootstrap classloader.

Agent jar structure

If you now look inside javaagent/build/libs/opentelemetry-javaagent-<version>-all.jar, you will see the following “clusters” of classes:

Available in the system class loader:

  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/bootstrap/AgentBootstrap - the one class from javaagent module

Available in the bootstrap class loader:

  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/bootstrap/ - contains the javaagent-bootstrap module
  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/instrumentation/api/ - contains the javaagent-api module
  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/shaded/instrumentation/api/ - contains the instrumentation-api module, shaded during creation of javaagent jar file by Shadow Gradle plugin
  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/shaded/io/ - contains the OpenTelemetry API and its dependency gRPC Context, both shaded during creation of javaagent jar file by Shadow Gradle plugin
  • io/opentelemetry/javaagent/slf4j/ - contains SLF4J and its simple logger implementation, shaded during creation of javaagent jar file by Shadow Gradle plugin

Available in the agent class loader:

  • inst/ - contains javaagent-tooling and javaagent-extension-api modules and instrumentation submodules, loaded and isolated inside AgentClassLoader. Including OpenTelemetry SDK (and the built-in exporters when using the -all artifact).

Agent initialization sequence Image source Agent classloader state Image source