profiler: add enable flag to control profiler activation (#2840)

This PR introduces a new environment variable DD_PROFILING_ENABLED.
If DD_PROFILING_ENABLED is set to false, profiling will be disabled even if
profiler.Start() is called. This allows the application code to always call
profiler.Start() while dynamically adjusting profiling through the environment
variable. Note that DD_PROFILING_ENABLED=true is not sufficient by itself
to enable profiling; you must still call profiler.Start().

Co-authored-by: Nick Ripley <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Felix Geisendörfer <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Felix Geisendörfer <[email protected]>

profiler/options.go

@@ -111,6 +111,7 @@ type config struct {
 	logStartup           bool
 	traceConfig          executionTraceConfig
 	endpointCountEnabled bool
+	enabled              bool
 }
 
 // logStartup records the configuration to the configured logger in JSON format
@@ -146,6 +147,7 @@ func logStartup(c *config) {
 		"execution_trace_size_limit": c.traceConfig.Limit,
 		"endpoint_count_enabled":     c.endpointCountEnabled,
 		"custom_profiler_label_keys": c.customProfilerLabels,
+		"enabled":                    c.enabled,
 	}
 	b, err := json.Marshal(info)
 	if err != nil {
@@ -208,6 +210,13 @@ func defaultConfig() (*config, error) {
 	} else {
 		c.agentURL = url.String() + "/profiling/v1/input"
 	}
+	// If DD_PROFILING_ENABLED is set to "auto", the profiler's activation will be determined by
+	// the Datadog admission controller, so we set it to true.
+	if os.Getenv("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED") == "auto" {
+		c.enabled = true
+	} else {
+		c.enabled = internal.BoolEnv("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED", true)
+	}
 	if v := os.Getenv("DD_PROFILING_UPLOAD_TIMEOUT"); v != "" {
 		d, err := time.ParseDuration(v)
 		if err != nil {

profiler/options_test.go

@@ -264,6 +264,21 @@ func TestEnvVars(t *testing.T) {
 		assert.Equal(t, "http://localhost:6218/profiling/v1/input", cfg.agentURL)
 	})
 
+	t.Run("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED", func(t *testing.T) {
+		t.Run("default", func(t *testing.T) {
+			cfg, err := defaultConfig()
+			require.NoError(t, err)
+			assert.Equal(t, true, cfg.enabled)
+		})
+
+		t.Run("override", func(t *testing.T) {
+			t.Setenv("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED", "false")
+			cfg, err := defaultConfig()
+			require.NoError(t, err)
+			assert.Equal(t, false, cfg.enabled)
+		})
+	})
+
 	t.Run("DD_PROFILING_UPLOAD_TIMEOUT", func(t *testing.T) {
 		t.Setenv("DD_PROFILING_UPLOAD_TIMEOUT", "3s")
 		cfg, err := defaultConfig()

profiler/profiler.go

@@ -47,6 +47,9 @@ var (
 //
 // It may return an error if an API key is not provided by means of the
 // WithAPIKey option, or if a hostname is not found.
+//
+// If DD_PROFILING_ENABLED=false is set in the process environment, it will
+// prevent the profiler from starting.
 func Start(opts ...Option) error {
 	mu.Lock()
 	defer mu.Unlock()
@@ -58,6 +61,9 @@ func Start(opts ...Option) error {
 	if err != nil {
 		return err
 	}
+	if !p.cfg.enabled {
+		return nil
+	}
 	activeProfiler = p
 	activeProfiler.run()
 	traceprof.SetProfilerEnabled(true)

profiler/profiler_test.go

@@ -83,6 +83,20 @@ func TestStart(t *testing.T) {
 		mu.Unlock()
 	})
 
+	t.Run("dd_profiling_not_enabled", func(t *testing.T) {
+		t.Setenv("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED", "false")
+		if err := Start(); err != nil {
+			t.Fatal(err)
+		}
+		defer Stop()
+
+		mu.Lock()
+		// if DD_PROFILING_ENABLED is false, the profiler should not be started even if Start() is called
+		// So we should not have an activeProfiler
+		assert.Nil(t, activeProfiler)
+		mu.Unlock()
+	})
+
 	t.Run("options", func(t *testing.T) {
 		if err := Start(); err != nil {
 			t.Fatal(err)
@@ -449,6 +463,19 @@ func TestImmediateProfile(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
+func TestEnabledFalse(t *testing.T) {
+	t.Setenv("DD_PROFILING_ENABLED", "false")
+	ch := startTestProfiler(t, 1, WithPeriod(10*time.Millisecond), WithProfileTypes())
+	select {
+	case <-ch:
+		t.Fatal("received profile when profiler should have been disabled")
+	case <-time.After(time.Second):
+		// This test might succeed incorrectly on an overloaded
+		// CI server, but is very likely to fail locally given a
+		// buggy implementation
+	}
+}
+
 func TestExecutionTraceCPUProfileRate(t *testing.T) {
 	// cpuProfileRate is picked randomly so we can check for it in the trace
 	// data to reduce the chance that it occurs in the trace data for some other

profiler/telemetry.go

@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ func startTelemetry(c *config) {
 			{Name: "execution_trace_size_limit", Value: c.traceConfig.Limit},
 			{Name: "endpoint_count_enabled", Value: c.endpointCountEnabled},
 			{Name: "num_custom_profiler_label_keys", Value: len(c.customProfilerLabels)},
+			{Name: "enabled", Value: c.enabled},
 		},
 	)
 }