This change introduces use of the runtime/metrics package in place of
runtime.MemStats for Go 1.17 or later. The runtime/metrics package was
introduced in Go 1.16, but not all the old metrics were accounted for
until 1.17.
The runtime/metrics package offers several advantages over using
runtime.MemStats:
* The list of metrics and their descriptions are machine-readable,
allowing new metrics to get added without any additional work.
* Detailed histogram-based metrics are now available, offering much
deeper insights into the Go runtime.
* The runtime/metrics API is significantly more efficient than
runtime.MemStats, even with the additional metrics added, because
it does not require any stop-the-world events.
That being said, integrating the package comes with some caveats, some
of which were discussed in #842. Namely:
* The old MemStats-based metrics need to continue working, so they're
exported under their old names backed by equivalent runtime/metrics
metrics.
* Earlier versions of Go need to continue working, so the old code
remains, but behind a build tag.
Finally, a few notes about the implementation:
* This change includes a whole bunch of refactoring to avoid significant
code duplication.
* This change adds a new histogram metric type specifically optimized
for runtime/metrics histograms. This type's methods also include
additional logic to deal with differences in bounds conventions.
* This change makes a whole bunch of decisions about how runtime/metrics
names are translated.
* This change adds a `go generate` script to generate a list of expected
runtime/metrics names for a given Go version for auditing. Users of
new versions of Go will transparently be allowed to use new metrics,
however.
Signed-off-by: Michael Anthony Knyszek <mknyszek@google.com>
Michael Knyszek