API

Incubator

• BREAKING: Refactor ExtendedTracer, ExtendedSpanBuilder to reflect incubating API conventions (#6497)

SDK

Exporter

• BREAKING: Serve prometheus metrics only on /metrics by default. To restore the previous behavior and serve metrics on all paths, override the default handler as demonstrated here. (#6476)
• Make OTLP exporter memory mode API public (#6469)
• Speed up OTLP string marshaling using sun.misc.Unsafe (#6433)
• Add exporter data classes for experimental profiling signal type. (#6374)
• Start prometheus http server with daemon thread (#6472)
• Update the Prometheus metrics library and improve how units are included in metric names. (#6473)
• Remove android animalsniffer check from prometheus exporter (#6478)

Extensions

• Load file config YAML using core schema, ensure that env var substitution retains string types. (#6436)
• Define dedicated file configuration SPI ComponentProvider (#6457)

Tooling

• Normalize timestamps and file ordering in jars, making the outputs reproducible (#6471)
• GHA for generating the post-release pull request (#6449)

🙇 Thank you

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

@breedx-splk @crossoverJie @DPUkyle @fstab @hboutemy @jack-berg @jhalliday @jkwatson @laurit @lizongwu @nluk @trask @zeitlinger