Logging - the Missing Component for GCC Plugin Testing

The importance of GCC plugins cannot be overstated in today's development of complex, often embedded systems software. GCC plugins play a crucial role in e.g. Linux kernel development, static program analysis, and compiler extension development. Surprisingly, however, very little work has been devoted to rigorous testing of such plugins. Even more, apparent core features of logging - enabling to monitor the execution of plugin code are missing. In this position paper, we want to argue for the importance of logging as a core feature in plugin development, as a crucial instrument for testing and debugging, security analysis and optimisation. We also expose why logging is not straightforward and why typical logging frameworks cannot be used for GCC plugins. We then sketch how we intend to add such logging, exclusively using components and libraries accessible to the GCC plugin API.