php, xampp and debug - can't get to work

Question

I know this question has been asked before and I've looked through the responses but no matter what I do, I can't create an environment to step through my php programs.

I've downloaded the XAMPP stack, and eclipse and enabled xdebug but nothing.

PHPinfo reports: Debug Build, No. Does that mean that I'll never get an XAMPP installation to debug. If so is there another windows, apache, php, myslq stack recommeneded?

I downloaded the komodo ide 21 day free trial and their wizard can't start debug either.

help

Answer 1

No, the Debug Build phpinfo() refers to is a compile-time switch/define that affects the way php itself is compiled. The debug build is less optimized, contains some more test code and the symbol files, used when stepping through the php C code with a debugger, are more accurate (mostly due to the less optimized code).
It does not affect the ability to add a script debugger module like xdebug. But you need a version of the module .dll/.so that is compatible with your version of php. The API version, Thread-safety "enabled/disabled" and "debug yes/no" information must match. (on second thought I'm not even sure if debug yes/no must match).
Does the xdebug section appear in the output of phpinfo()? If not make sure you've edited the right php.ini. In recent versions of xampp that should be <xampp dir>/php/php.ini regardless of whether you use php-cli or the apache module. But it used to be <xampp dir>/php/php.ini for the cli version but <xampp dir>/apache/bin/php.ini for the apache module of php.
Also check the error.log in <xampp dir>/apache/logs for error messages that might be related. Those should begin with "PHP Startup: ....error message..."

Answer 2

try using wamp if your using windows. It works great for me