Build a custom OpenTelemetry Collector distribution using the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (ocb)

Steps

1. Install a Go version compatible with the target ocb release, then download the ocb binary from opentelemetry-collector-releases assets tagged with the cmd/builder prefix for your OS/arch, and chmod it executable.
2. Create a builder-config.yaml manifest with a dist section specifying module, name, description, output_path, version, go, and debug_compilation (all optional, but name/output_path are commonly set, e.g. name: otelcol-dev, output_path: ./otelcol-dev).
3. Add the components you want under top-level keys receivers, processors, exporters, extensions (and optionally connectors, providers), each entry given as a gomod: reference with the full Go module path and an exact version, e.g. go.opentelemetry.io/collector/receiver/otlpreceiver v0.155.0.
4. Include confmap providers explicitly under providers (e.g. envprovider, fileprovider, httpprovider, httpsprovider, yamlprovider) if you need config expansion syntax like ${env:VAR} to work — they are not added automatically.
5. Run ./ocb --config builder-config.yaml to generate Go source and compile the binary; the result is written under the output_path directory defined in dist.
6. Optionally containerize the build in a multi-stage Dockerfile that go installs go.opentelemetry.io/collector/cmd/builder@<version> and runs builder --config builder-config.yaml before copying the compiled binary into a minimal final image.