# Execution log: e2e test — OTel tracing against real Tempo

Plan: `docs/plans/2026-08-24-1224-tracing-e2e.md`

- [x] Step 1 — `test/e2e/tracing_test.go`
- [x] Step 2 — Makefile
- [x] Step 3 — Docs

## Steps 1–3 — spec, Makefile, docs (one commit)

The three steps landed together — the spec is one new file and the other
two are its wiring. `Describe("OTel tracing", Ordered)` is fully
self-contained (own ns create → `make install`/`make deploy` → teardown)
because Ginkgo randomizes top-level container order, so it cannot share the
Manager Describe's deployment. It reuses the package-level `namespace` /
`managerImage` and the suite's idioms (`utils.Run`, curl-pod with the
restricted-PSS overrides JSON, log-substring `Eventually`s).

Judgment calls beyond the plan's letter:

- The squid pre-pull (`docker pull` + `kind load`) is **best effort** — a
  missing docker binary logs a note and continues rather than failing the
  spec; the 5m Ready timeout still covers an in-cluster pull.
- The OTLP preflight pod prints per-attempt HTTP codes and a final
  `OTLP_OK`/`OTLP_UNREACHABLE` marker; the assertion quotes the pod's
  output, so an unreachable endpoint names itself in the failure.
- `kubectl set env` is passed the literal
  `OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=...$(POD_NAME)...` string via `exec.Command` —
  no shell involved, kubectl stores `$()` verbatim, and the in-place update
  keeps the var after the downward-API vars it references.
- Tempo helpers are stdlib-only; `/api/traces/<id>` is decoded as
  OTLP-JSON (`batches[].scopeSpans[].spans[].name`), which is Tempo's
  actual shape (not Jaeger's).

Verified so far: `go vet -tags=e2e ./...` clean. The live run against
Tempo (`TEMPO_URL=http://192.168.0.30:3200
OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://192.168.0.30:4318 make test-e2e`) is recorded below
once it has been executed.