System and method for logging messages in an embedded computer system

A logging system which accepts logged messages concurrently from any number of parts of the application software. Each message is written to a message queue and then read and passed to a message forwarder, which the message forwarder analyzes one or more of the data fields of the message in order to decide whether to forward a particular message. In the event that the message will be forwarded, the forwarder also determines which destination or destinations to forward it to, which data fields from the logged message will be forwarded, and how those fields will be formatted when forwarded.The forwarder code executes on its own Operating System thread or task to decouple the continued execution of the application from the process of forwarding the messages to their destination or destinations.