[edenfed]

eBPF instrumentation does not require code changes, redeployment or restart to running applications.

We are constantly adding more language support for eBPF instrumentation and are aiming to cover the most popular programming languages soon.

Btw, not sure that sampling is really the solution to combat overhead, after all you probably do want that data. Trying to fix production issue when the data you need is missing due to sampling is not fun

[rocmcd]

All good points, thank you.

What's the limit on language support? Is it theoretically possible to support any language/runtime? Or does it come down to the protocol (HTTP, gRPC, etc) being used by the communicating processes?

[edenfed]

We already solved compiled languages (Go, C, Rust) and JIT languages (Java, C#). Interpreted languages (Python, JS) are the only ones left, hopefully we will solve these as well soon. The big challenge is supporting all the different runtimes, once that is solved implementing support for different protocols / open-source libraries is not as complicated.

[phillipcarter]

FWIW it's theoretically possible to support any language/runtime, but since eBPF is operating at the level it's at, there's no magic abstraction layer to plug into. Every runtime and/or protocol involves different segments of memory and certain bytes meaning certain things. It's all in service towards having no additional requirements for an end-user to install, but once you're in eBPF world everything is runtime-and-protocol-and-library-specific.