Empty attribute values in disk buffering

[breedx-splk]

Fixes #2257.

I don't love this, but it's a way for us to work around this empty string Attribute issue until we can get some clarification around the spec. See open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification#4660.

[otelbot-java-contrib]

🔧 The result from spotlessApply was committed to the PR branch.

[LikeTheSalad]

Thank you for taking a look into this. If I understand correctly, the issue appeared after disk-buffering swapped its serialization mechanism to use the core SDK serialization. Could it mean that there's an issue with the upstream serialization that we should address (regardless of the otel spec changes, as it seems more related to proto spec issues)?

[breedx-splk]

If I understand correctly, the issue appeared after disk-buffering swapped its serialization mechanism to use the core SDK serialization.

Right yeah see this comment open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java#7656 (comment)

Could it mean that there's an issue with the upstream serialization that we should address (regardless of the otel spec changes, as it seems more related to proto spec issues)?

That was my instinct as well...but I started to pull that thread and the sweater got very ugly very quickly. See open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java#7656. Ideally yes, it should be handled in upstream....so if you're hesitant to accept this on ideological grounds, I understand...but I wanted to get a temporary fix in anyway.

[LikeTheSalad]

That was my instinct as well...but I started to pull that thread and the sweater got very ugly very quickly. See open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java#7656. Ideally yes, it should be handled in upstream....so if you're hesitant to accept this on ideological grounds, I understand...but I wanted to get a temporary fix in anyway.

Got it. It does look like a tricky issue to tackle, I agree it's probably better/faster to have some workaround here in the meantime. Thank you.