The New Relic Go Agent provides comprehensive application performance monitoring for Go services, enabling developers to track transactions, database calls, outbound requests, and system-level metrics like garbage collection and goroutine activity. It requires manual instrumentation via its API, offering flexibility and control over data collection.

How It Works

The agent integrates directly into Go applications, requiring explicit method calls to instrument specific code paths. It also offers numerous integration packages for popular Go frameworks (Gin, gRPC, Echo) and libraries (databases, Redis, AWS SDK), simplifying instrumentation for common use cases. Even without explicit instrumentation, importing the agent provides basic runtime metrics.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Install: go get github.com/newrelic/go-agent/v3
• Requirements: Go 1.22+, Linux, macOS, Windows.
• Example: env NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY=__YOUR_NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY__ go run v3/examples/server/main.go
• Documentation: GETTING_STARTED, GUIDE

Highlighted Details

• Extensive integration packages for web frameworks, databases, message queues, and AI services.
• Support for instrumenting AWS SDK v1/v2 and AWS Lambda.
• Includes integrations for popular logging libraries (logrus, zap, slog) and context propagation.
• Offers alternatives via OpenTelemetry, OpenCensus, and Prometheus exporters.

Maintenance & Community

• Active development with regular updates.
• Contributions are encouraged via GitHub issues and pull requests, requiring a CLA.
• Support channels include GitHub issues, New Relic Community forums, and developer resources.

Licensing & Compatibility

• Licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.
• Permissive license suitable for commercial use and integration with closed-source applications.

Limitations & Caveats

Requires manual code instrumentation for full benefits, unlike agents that rely solely on automatic instrumentation. Version 3.0 introduced breaking changes requiring migration from v2.x.