This release drops the compatibility guarantee of Go 1.19.

Added

• Add WithProducer option in go.opentelemetry.op/otel/exporters/prometheus to restore the ability to register producers on the prometheus exporter's manual reader. (#4473)
• Add IgnoreValue option in go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric/metricdata/metricdatatest to allow ignoring values when comparing metrics. (#4447)

Deprecated

• The NewMetricExporter in go.opentelemetry.io/otel/bridge/opencensus was deprecated in v0.35.0 (#3541). The deprecation notice format for the function has been corrected to trigger Go documentation and build tooling. (#4470)

Removed

• Removed the deprecated go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/jaeger package. (#4467)
• Removed the deprecated go.opentelemetry.io/otel/example/jaeger package. (#4467)
• Removed the deprecated go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric/aggregation package. (#4468)
• Removed the deprecated internal packages in go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp and its sub-packages. (#4469)
• Dropped guaranteed support for versions of Go less than 1.20. (#4481)

New Contributors

• @pkbhowmick made their first contribution in https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/pull/4462
• @RangelReale made their first contribution in https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/pull/4447

Full Changelog: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/compare/v1.17.0...v1.18.0