How do I properly debug plugin loading issues in a custom SDK environment?

How do I properly debug plugin loading issues in a custom SDK environment?

BY 15 Apr 2025 SDK & IDE

Hey everyone 👋

I’m currently working with a custom SDK for an embedded platform, and I’ve run into an issue where a couple of dynamically loaded plugins aren’t initializing properly. The SDK is built on C++ and uses a custom-built IDE (though it’s Eclipse-based).

So far I’ve tried:

  • Logging from the plugin constructor (but nothing gets printed).

  • Verifying paths in the plugin manifest (all seem correct).

  • Running the same plugin outside the IDE ragdoll hit (works fine).

It seems like the plugins are either not being loaded at all, or failing silently. There’s no crash, just no initialization.

My question is:
What’s the best way to trace or debug plugin loading behavior in a custom SDK + IDE setup? Are there any tools or logging flags I should be using to catch what’s going wrong at load time?

Any insights or even general approaches for debugging this type of issue would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance 🙏

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