Xdebug

Xdebug is a php debugger. It allows a developer to debug php applications in a similar manner to that of other languages. Clients can connect to xdebug remotely. NetBeans is an example of a remote client.

• first install apache2, and php
  • ( php will need built WITH cli for command line testing, so don't use --disable-cli flag)
• download source from http://www.xdebug.org
• view README to see if process has changed
• in the root of the extracted files…

  phpize
  
  ./configure --enable-xdebug
  
  make
  
  sudo cp modules/xdebug.so /usr/local/apache2/modules/
  
  sudo chown www:www /usr/local/apache2/modules/xdebug.so

• edit php.ini (if php was built as shown on this wiki, edit or create php.ini in /usr/local/lib)

  # set up xdebug
  zend_extension=/usr/local/apache2/modules/xdebug.so
  xdebug.remote_enable=on
  xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
  xdebug.remote_host=localhost
  xdebug.remote_port=9000

• restart apache
• view a phpinfo() page to verify that the xdebug module is loaded
• for a simple function call dump in php, use one of these lines:

  xdebug_start_trace(getcwd() . "/trace", XDEBUG_TRACE_APPEND);
  xdebug_start_trace(getcwd() . "/trace");

• see NetBeans or other client documentation on how to debug