OpenMetrics parser cannot parse the output of `promtool tsdb dump-openmetrics`

[n-peugnet]

I tried using the example code...

import sys
from prometheus_client.openmetrics.parser import text_string_to_metric_families

for family in text_string_to_metric_families(sys.stdin.read()):
 for sample in family.samples:
 print("Name:{0} Labels:{1} Value:{2} Timestamp:{3}".format(*sample))

...to parse an OpenMetrics file produced by promtool tsdb dump-openmetrics, but I run into the following issue:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/nicolas/IE6/synapse-meshsim/exp/./normalise_timestamps.py", line 6, in <module>
 for family in text_string_to_metric_families(sys.stdin.read()):
 File "/home/nicolas/IE6/synapse-meshsim/exp/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/prometheus_client/openmetrics/parser.py", line 18, in text_string_to_metric_families
 yield from text_fd_to_metric_families(StringIO.StringIO(text))
 File "/home/nicolas/IE6/synapse-meshsim/exp/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/prometheus_client/openmetrics/parser.py", line 543, in text_fd_to_metric_families
 yield build_metric(name, documentation, typ, unit, samples)
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "/home/nicolas/IE6/synapse-meshsim/exp/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/prometheus_client/openmetrics/parser.py", line 472, in build_metric
 raise ValueError("Clashing name: " + name + suffix)
ValueError: Clashing name: go_gc_duration_seconds

This comes from this code:

client_python/prometheus_client/openmetrics/parser.py

Lines 487 to 489 in 46eae7b

	for suffix in set(type_suffixes.get(typ, []) + [""]):
	if name + suffix in seen_names:
	raise ValueError("Clashing name: " + name + suffix)

But I don't understand why this check exists in the first place? In my case, I have the same metrics for multiple instances, and dump-openmetrics groups them by instance, then by metrics name. Can't we just remove this check altogether?