API

• Stabilize isEnabled() on Tracer, Logger, and metric instruments (#8200)

Incubating

• BREAKING Update EnvironmentGetter and EnvironmentSetter key normalization to reflect spec changes (#8233)

SDK

Traces

• Retain propagated context when generating random trace IDs (#8263)
• Add rate-limited warning log when BatchSpanProcessor drops spans (#8167)

Metrics

• Track series start time per aggregator rather than at SdkMeterProvider creation time (#8180)
• Capture context class loader during async callback registration (#8091)
• Make include/exclude work correctly with empty (but non-null) lists (#8185)

Logs

• Fix condition for recording successful log processing metrics (#8226)

Exporters

• OTLP: add configurable bounds to response body reading (#8224, #8277)
• OTLP: only throw invalid response exception when gRPC response size < 5 bytes (#8194)
• OTLP: remove duplicate FINEST-level error logging in gRPC exporter (#8216)
• OTLP Profiles: clean up profile signal exporters for consistency (#8172)

Extensions

• BREAKING Autoconfigure: remove deprecated ComponentLoader class (use io.opentelemetry.common.ComponentLoader instead) (#8243)
• Declarative config: fix DeclarativeConfigProperties javadoc to not throw exceptions (#8079)
• Declarative config: resource attribute filtering should include attributes by default (#8177)
• Declarative config: enforce IncludedExcludeModel .included and .excluded are not empty (#8266)
• Autoconfigure: restructure SDK incubator to not depend on autoconfigure internals (#8242)

Project tooling

• Disable Gradle build cache on releases to mitigate supply chain risk (#8254)

🙇 Thank you

This release was possible thanks to the following contributors who shared their brilliant ideas and awesome pull requests:

@adp2201 @anuraaga @arun-annamalai @Bhagirath00 @breedx-splk @brunobat @cleverchuk @dashpole @eamonn-kearns-ibm @filipetrovic @jack-berg @jackshirazi @jaydeluca @jhalliday @jkwatson @laurit @martincostello @maryliag @MikeGoldsmith @opensourcevk @pellared @robsunday @SylvainJuge @trask @TruongNguyen1305 @Tusharika725 @VamshikrishnaMonagari @zeitlinger