You can write a message to the var/log/debug.log
file by the following code:
\Magento\Framework\App\ObjectManager::getInstance()
->get('Psr\Log\LoggerInterface')
->debug('message')
;
Magento 1 has much more shorter way to do it:
Mage::log('message');
Magento 2 has shorter ways too: many objects have already the _logger
property, so you can call inside such objects:
$this->_logger->debug('message');
But it is not the universal solution, because not all objects have the _logger
property.