Setting Up APM with C++

Docs > APM > Tracing Guides > Setting Up APM with C++

Overview

This guide expands on the C++ APM docs to provide step-by-step instructions on how to set up a simple C++ app with APM on your VM for troubleshooting.

Setting up your box

Basic environment

First, spin up a fresh ubuntu/jammy64 Vagrant box and ssh into it with:

vagrant init ubuntu/jammy64
vagrant up
vagrant ssh

Next, install the agent with the instructions in the UI.

Prepping for C++

Install g++ and cmake with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install g++ cmake

Run these two lines together to get the latest C++ version:

get_latest_release() {
  wget -qO- "https://api.github.com/repos/$1/releases/latest" |
    grep '"tag_name":' |
    sed -E 's/.*"([^"]+)".*/\1/';
}
DD_OPENTRACING_CPP_VERSION="$(get_latest_release DataDog/dd-opentracing-cpp)"

If you get a rate limited message from GitHub, wait a few minutes and run the command again. When the update is complete, confirm that this is successful by checking your C++ version with:

echo $DD_OPENTRACING_CPP_VERSION

Then, download and install the dd-opentracing-cpp library with:

wget https://github.com/DataDog/dd-opentracing-cpp/archive/${DD_OPENTRACING_CPP_VERSION}.tar.gz -O dd-opentracing-cpp.tar.gz

After downloading the tar file, create a new directory and a .build file for the library:

mkdir -p dd-opentracing-cpp/.build

Then unzip it:

tar zxvf dd-opentracing-cpp.tar.gz -C ./dd-opentracing-cpp/ --strip-components=1

You should see a list of the library contents in your console:

dd-opentracing-cpp-1.0.1/test/integration/nginx/nginx.conf
dd-opentracing-cpp-1.0.1/test/integration/nginx/nginx_integration_test.sh

Next, go in your .build directory:

cd dd-opentracing-cpp/.build

Finally, install dependencies with:

sudo ../scripts/install_dependencies.sh
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Building a simple app

Create a new file called tracer_example.cpp and populate it with the below code:

#include <datadog/opentracing.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  datadog::opentracing::TracerOptions tracer_options{"localhost", 8126, "compiled-in example"};
  auto tracer = datadog::opentracing::makeTracer(tracer_options);

  // Create some spans.
  {
    auto span_a = tracer->StartSpan("A");
    span_a->SetTag("tag", 123);
    auto span_b = tracer->StartSpan("B", {opentracing::ChildOf(&span_a->context())});
    span_b->SetTag("tag", "value");
  }

  tracer->Close();
  return 0;
}

This creates a tracer that generates two spans, a parent span span_a and a child span span_b, and tags them.

Then, link against libdd_opentracing and libopentracing with:

g++ -std=c++14 -o tracer_example tracer_example.cpp -ldd_opentracing -lopentracing

Finally, run the app with:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/ ./tracer_example

Sending traces

Now that an app exists, you can start sending traces and see the Trace Agent in action.

First, tail the Trace Agent log with:

tail -f /var/log/datadog/trace-agent.log

Next, open a new tab and run the example a couple times:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/ ./tracer_example

On the Trace Agent tab, you will see something similar to:

2019-08-09 20:02:26 UTC | TRACE | INFO | (pkg/trace/info/stats.go:108 in LogStats) | [lang:cpp lang_version:201402 tracer_version:v1.0.1] -> traces received: 1, traces filtered: 0, traces amount: 363 bytes, events extracted: 0, events sampled: 0

The service then shows up in the Service Catalog in Datadog.