Breakpoint not firing using PHP/XAMPP/NetBeans/Moodle

Question

Bit of an obscure one this. My setup is all running on my local Windows machine; I've got NetBeans IDE installed, a local XAMPP server with XDebug running, and an installation of Moodle with some custom addons in the mod directory.

I can happily create breakpoints in PHP pages (including the main Moodle ones), but any breakpoints I place on php files in the mod directory never fire (on my mods, or any of the inbuilt ones). I thought Moodle might be doing some "magic" to display files in the mod directory, but my browser shows the url as http://localhost/moodle/mod/view.php - and that's the file I've set my breakpoint in.

Has anyone got any experience with debugging Moodle addins, or could possible point me in the direction of how to troubleshoot the breakpoint not firing? I've tried the Moodle site, but can't find anything relevent.

Answer 1

Actually, I think I've figured it out. If I tell it to debug that particular file it will 404 (it doesn't put the directories in, guess it's a bug), but if I then manually go to http://localhost/moodle/mod/view.php?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=netbeans-xdebug (which errors, no parameters are being passed in), and THEN manually navigate to Moodle then my mod breakpoints fire correctly.

All very bizarre, but it seems to be a usable workaround. I'm guessing the mods are running under some kind of different PHP session.

I'll keep this answer here in case anyone else has this bizarre problem.