Support a histogram backed timer.

[avolokhov]

Feature Request

Motivation Behind Feature

Hi, @MrLotU. When adapting prometheus data types to swift-metrics api, there's multiple ways to back API types with prometheus types. In particular, both Summary and Histogram can serve as a backend for Timer. In their docs, prometheus compares Summary and Histogram implementations: https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/histograms/#quantiles. One major difference there is that Summary backed values are not aggregatable. For server side application it's common to have multiple replicas of your backend. This makes Summary based timer a show stopper.

Feature Description

For the reference (it contradicts my point, but I still have to mention it One solution I see is to make MetricsFactory conformance a wrapper and not an extension to PrometheusClient. This will make the code much more flexible, allow users to pick/write their own MetricsFactory conformance and potentially help us with more elaborate Prometheus -> swift-metrics adapters (see my other issue https://github.com/MrLotU/SwiftPrometheus/issues/36; being able to store baseLabels separately from PrometheusClient will simplify the solution).

Alternatives or Workarounds

It contradicts my point, but I have to mention that java dropwizard adapter uses Summary as a backed for Timer. However, it still forces an anti pattern

avg(http_request_duration_seconds{quantile="0.95"}) // BAD!

Prometheus mentions on their docs. Python prometheus-flask-exporter uses Histogram as backing type for timer.

In my local fork I wrap PrometheusClient with a custom metrics factory that does this:

    private func makeHistogramBackedTimer(label: String, dimensions: [(String, String)]) -> TimerHandler {
        let createHandler = { (histogram: PromHistogram) -> TimerHandler in
            HistogramBackedTimer(histogram: histogram, dimensions: dimensions)
        }
        if let histogram: PromHistogram<Int64, DimensionHistogramLabels> = prometheus.getMetricInstance(with: label, andType: .histogram) {
            return createHandler(histogram)
        }
        return createHandler(prometheus.createHistogram(forType: Int64.self, named: label, buckets: defaultExponentialBuckets, labels: DimensionHistogramLabels.self))
    }

/// This is a `swift-metrics` timer backed by a Prometheus' `PromHistogram` implementation.
/// This is superior to `Summary` backed timer as `Summary` emits a set of quantiles, which is impossible to correctly aggregate when one wants to render a percentile for a set of instances.
/// `Histogram` aggregation is possible with server-side math magic.
class HistogramBackedTimer: TimerHandler {
    let histogram: PromHistogram<Int64, DimensionHistogramLabels>
    let labels: DimensionHistogramLabels?
    // this class is a lightweight wrapper around heavy prometheus metric type. This class is not cached and each time
    // created anew. This allows us to use variable timeUnit without locking.
    var timeUnit: TimeUnit?

    init(histogram: PromHistogram<Int64, DimensionHistogramLabels>, dimensions: [(String, String)]) {
        self.histogram = histogram
        if !dimensions.isEmpty {
            self.labels = DimensionHistogramLabels(dimensions)
        } else {
            self.labels = nil
        }
    }

    func preferDisplayUnit(_ unit: TimeUnit) {
        self.timeUnit = unit
    }

    func recordNanoseconds(_ duration: Int64) {
        // histogram can't be configured with timeUnits, so we have to modify incoming data
        histogram.observe(duration / Int64(timeUnit?.scaleFromNanoseconds ?? 1), labels)
    }
}

It works ok, but it's clumsy and forces every user with similar use case to wrap.