Little Black Hat

xdebug is a powerful PHP debugging tool. With xdebug you can get all sorts of debugging out, stack traces, and memory usage (as well as delta). It also gives you classic code-stepping tools and breakpoint. Finally, you can debug your PHP applications! Getting it working on Mac OS X has been a bit confusing, but this how to guide will give you all the tools you need!

Before we proceed, you have MacPorts installed right?

So how do we go about getting xdebug? First, install xdebug:

sudo port install php5-xdebug

Next enable xdebug. All this goes in your php.ini

zend_extension="/opt/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so"

; General config
;Dumps local variables on exception
xdebug.show_local_vars=On
;Dump server variables
xdebug.dump.SERVER=*
;Dump global variables
xdebug.dump_globals=On
xdebug.collect_params=4;

; Tracing
xdebug.auto_trace=On
xdebug.trace_output_dir= /opt/local/php_traces/
xdebug.show_mem_delta=On
xdebug.collect_return=On

; Profiler
xdebug.profiler_enable=1
xdebug.profiler_output_dir=/opt/local/php_traces

; Debugging. You might need to specify your host with some additional options
xdebug.remote_enable=1

For viewing profile output:
http://www.maccallgrind.com/

You will use this program to open the cachegrind.out files in /opt/local/php_trace

For using the debugger:
http://www.bluestatic.org/software/macgdbp/

Just put “XDEBUG_SESSION_START=session_name” in your query string. Session_name can be any alphanumeric string.

You can set a breakpoint with: xdebug_break()