Next.js compatibility

[einfachai]

Hi there,

I tried a lot and asked all AIs on how to implement this pino otel transport in a next.js app.
It seems like Worker Threads from NodeJS are not compatible with Next.

Did anyone successfully implemented this Otel transport in a Next App?

Thank you.

[Vunovati]

Hello, can you post an example of what you've tried? I did not try using this transport with Next.js myself. Others have had similar problems it seems in the past:

#188

[mahmoodhamdi]

Next.js has issues with pino transports because it bundles server code with Turbopack/webpack, and pino's worker thread-based transports require runtime module resolution that bundlers can't handle.

Here are approaches that work:

1. Mark pino packages as external (recommended for Next.js 14+):

// next.config.js
module.exports = {
  serverExternalPackages: [
    "pino",
    "pino-opentelemetry-transport",
    "pino-pretty"
  ]
}

This tells Next.js not to bundle these packages — they'll be resolved at runtime from node_modules like a regular Node.js app.

2. Use pino-webpack-plugin for older Next.js versions:

const { PinoWebpackPlugin } = require("pino-webpack-plugin")

module.exports = {
  webpack: (config) => {
    config.plugins.push(new PinoWebpackPlugin({
      transports: ["pino-opentelemetry-transport"]
    }))
    return config
  }
}

3. Use multistream instead of thread-based transport if the above don't work:

Instead of using pino's transport system (which spawns worker threads), create the OpenTelemetry stream directly in the main thread:

import pino from "pino"

// Create logger without transport (no worker threads)
const logger = pino({
  level: "info"
})

And handle the OTLP export via the standard OpenTelemetry SDK log exporter directly, without going through pino's transport system.

The serverExternalPackages approach (option 1) is typically the simplest fix for Next.js apps.