How to Export Build Traces to Datadog

Datadog ingests CI spans either through its native CI Visibility integration or through the Collector datadog exporter.

For GitHub Actions, the simplest path is Datadog CI Visibility, which reads runs through a GitHub App. For a Collector-based pipeline, use the datadog exporter with your API key and site (for example datadoghq.com or datadoghq.eu).

Steps

• Pick CI Visibility (GitHub App) or the Collector datadog exporter.
• Provide DD_API_KEY and DD_SITE to whichever path you use.
• Confirm pipeline executions appear under CI Visibility to Pipelines.

Collector exporter

exporters:
  datadog:
    api:
      key: ${env:DD_API_KEY}
      site: datadoghq.com
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [datadog]

Gotchas

• CI Visibility bills separately from APM; check which product your plan includes.
• The datadog exporter needs the API key at startup, so inject it as an env var, not a file path.

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