[GSoc 2026 PROPOSAL] Leo Cheng | OpenTelemetry Onboarding with Reproducible Docker Compose Environments

Introduction

Hi, I’m Leo Cheng, a rising junior at The Ohio State University studying Computer Science. I’m particularly interested in DevOps and observability systems, and I’ve previously worked on open-source CI/CD tooling using GitHub Actions during my internship at Brookhaven National Lab.

While experimenting with the Jenkins OpenTelemetry plugin, I found the onboarding experience fragmented and difficult to reproduce, which motivated me to improve it for future users.

I have already set up a local development environment for the OpenTelemetry plugin and begun exploring its core components (e.g., MonitoringRunListener, MonitoringPipelineListener). I am also working toward making my first contribution.

Hope you are having a wonderful day, here is my project:

Abstract

This project aims to improve onboarding for the OpenTelemetry Jenkins Project by providing reproducible environments and structured documentation.

Description

Currently, users face challenges when configuring telemetry pipelines due to:

  • Incomplete setup instructions

  • Outdated examples

  • Lack of end-to-end working environments

This project will address these issues by:

  • Creating Docker Compose-based observability stacks

  • Providing step-by-step documentation for macOS and Linux

  • Developing example Jenkins pipelines that generate traces, metrics, and logs

  • Introducing a telemetry validation script to verify correct system configuration

These improvements will reduce onboarding friction and enable developers to quickly adopt observability practices within Jenkins.

Full Project Proposal: GSoC2026_CHENGLEO_OpenTelemetry-Onboarding-With-Reproducible-Docker-Compose-Environments - Google Docs