# spring-attic/spring-cloud-sleuth

Distributed tracing for spring cloud

Repository: https://github.com/spring-attic/spring-cloud-sleuth
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/spring-cloud-sleuth
Homepage: http://spring-attic.github.io/spring-cloud-sleuth/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: java, spring, spring-boot, spring-cloud, tracing, zipkin, microservices, cloud-native, spring-cloud-core, distributed-tracing, zipkin-brave, instrumentation, open-telemetry, open-telemetry-java
Archived: true
Last push: 2026-05-28T15:37:44+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 84, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4198, "days_push": 97, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived, no_readme
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1792, forks 773 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:37.205510+00:00)

## What it is
Spring Cloud Sleuth is a distributed tracing library for Spring Boot and Spring Cloud applications that instruments requests with trace and span IDs, integrating with Zipkin, Brave, and OpenTelemetry. The project has been moved to the Spring Attic and is superseded by Micrometer Tracing, so it receives no new feature development.

## Use cases
- trace requests across microservices in a spring boot system
- add correlation ids to logs in spring cloud apps
- export spans to zipkin from a spring application
- debug latency in distributed spring microservices
- instrument rest calls and messaging with trace context
- migrate legacy spring tracing to opentelemetry concepts

## When to choose
- you maintain an existing Spring Boot 2.x codebase already using Sleuth
- you need Zipkin/Brave-based tracing on an older Spring Cloud release train

## When to avoid
- you are starting a new Spring Boot 3+ project - use Micrometer Tracing instead
- you need actively developed OpenTelemetry-native instrumentation
- you are not on the Spring/JVM stack

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: tracing, monitoring, middleware
- domain: microservices, monitoring, backend, developer-tools, cloud-computing
- platform: jvm, self-hosted, cloud
- tags: spring-boot, spring-cloud, zipkin, opentelemetry, brave, observability, distributed-tracing, attic, archived, instrumentation, spring

## Member repositories
- spring-attic/spring-cloud-sleuth (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:37.205510+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:23:02.683812+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - homepage: http://spring-attic.github.io/spring-cloud-sleuth/ (fetched 2026-08-29T11:01:53.378029+00:00, sha 37b36614d456)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.