When you run bugpoint with --debug, it is supposed to print out the arguments to the programs that it compiles and runs using the AbstractInterpreter interface to GCC. This seems to work the first time GCC::ExecuteProgram() is called, but not on subsequent occasions. What seems to be happening is that std::cerr loses any output that gets written to it, after GCC::ExecuteProgram() calls RunProgramWithTimeout() at ToolRunner.cpp:315. It's not clear how this invocation of RunProgramWithTimeout() is different from the earlier ones. I produced this error today by trying to run bugpoint on the SPECint "GAP" benchmark.
Apparently sending (const char*)0 to std::cerr CLOSES it. That's a neat "feature". This is now fixed: http://mail.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvm-commits/Week-of-Mon-20031013/008298.html