set_result fails inside span, improve code or documentation

[jspurestore]

I think leaving this as it is an invitation to have people fall into this pit, like I just di. Either the interface should be extended to see if the caller passed a valid code or improve the documentation to make it clear what is expected and how someone can work around it. I am happy to do the documentation update if someone can tell me how I can propose a documentation change.

Originally posted by @jspurestore in #1742 (comment)

[lzchen]

Making a doc update would be creating a pr directly with the opentelemetry.io repository.

[srikanthccv]

The work around people find is actually the intended way to use it but I can understand where they are coming from. Here is the api documentation for set_staus
https://opentelemetry-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_modules/opentelemetry/trace/span.html#Span.set_status. It's easy to overlook the difference between Status and StatusCode. We discussed about this in past and decided just keep the current signature. Given how easy it is to mistake this api, I think we might want to revisit our decision.

@open-telemetry/python-approvers what do you think about changing the
set_status(status: Status) to
set_status(status: Union[Status, StatusCode], description: Optional[str] = None)

[ocelotl]

The work around people find is actually the intended way to use it but I can understand where they are coming from. Here is the api documentation for set_staus https://opentelemetry-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_modules/opentelemetry/trace/span.html#Span.set_status. It's easy to overlook the difference between Status and StatusCode. We discussed about this in past and decided just keep the current signature. Given how easy it is to mistake this api, I think we might want to revisit our decision.

@open-telemetry/python-approvers what do you think about changing the set_status(status: Status) to set_status(status: Union[Status, StatusCode], description: Optional[str] = None)

What would description be used for?

[srikanthccv]

For the description attr of Status along with status_code.

[ocelotl]

For the description attr of Status along with status_code.

Ok, sounds good 👍