Notes
This release of the Python agent includes improvements to distributed tracing, and bug fixes.
The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from the New Relic download site.
New Features
- Add new span attribute transaction.name - A new attribute, - transaction.name, has been added to the root span.
Improved features
- Transaction attributes are added to the root span - Transaction attributes, including response attributes, are now added to the root span. 
- Custom attributes are added to the root span - The public API methods - newrelic.agent.add_custom_paramand- newrelic.agent.add_custom_paramsnow add the specified custom attribute to the root span in addition to the transaction. If the maximum number of custom attributes is reached, span-level custom attributes take precedence over transaction-level custom attributes.
- Error attributes added to each span/segment - Error attributes - error.classand- error.messageto all spans that exit without handling an exception.
Bug fixes
- asyncio: application crash when a transaction that started on a completed parent task exits - When a transaction that started on a completed parent task exited, an exception was raised. This error has been fixed. 
- Error attributes are no longer added if the error collector is disabled - If the error collector is disabled via error_collector.enabled, error attributes - error.classand- error.messageare not added to the currently executing span.
Security Updates
Note that changes were made that add attributes to the root span. Transaction-level attribute filtering via the transaction.attribute.exclude configuration setting will not filter the attribute(s) for the root span. Those attributes may unexpectedly start to appear on the root span.