Wrong information in the OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER config docs?

[mocdaniel]

Describe the bug

In the docs, the following is mentioned regarding the configuration of the OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER config:

Comma-separated list of propagators. Supported values: otlp, zipkin, console, logging, none. See the OpenTelemetry specification for details.

However, when I set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=console,otlp, the application crashes with the following error:

{
  "time": "2025-11-12T17:48:24.027625691Z",
  "level": "ERROR",
  "source": {
    "function": "main.main",
    "file": "/usr/src/go.opentelemetry.io/auto/cli/main.go",
    "line": 150
  },
  "msg": "failed to create OTel SDK handler","error":"unknown exporter or metrics producer"
}

Can I only configure a single exporter via the env variable? In this case, the docs would be misleading. Otherwise, I might have found a bug.

I shortly looked at the source code where the error appears, but couldn't make much of it - I don't know the OTel SDK ecosystem well enough to follow the call all the way and track down a possible source of this behavior.

Environment

• OS: Linux
• Go Version: go1.25.1
• Version: unknown - I am using the official container image with SHA cb9b103cddcaa846a5d8b39fefc793dd7fe9bc1a09230c6c076301c0fda07c49

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Pull the container image with sha cb9b103cddcaa846a5d8b39fefc793dd7fe9bc1a09230c6c076301c0fda07c49
2. Configure two exporters via OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=console,otlp
3. Start the container
4. See error above

Expected behavior

Either of the two cases:

a) it should be possible to configure multiple exporters via OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER as outlined in the docs
b) the docs should be adjusted to clarify that only one exporter can be configured at a time

Additional context

Feel free to ask additional questions regarding the setup I'm experiencing this in if needed. I don't know which other information could be immediately useful at the moment.

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