PHP debugging on OS X - hopeless?

Question

I have tried:

1. Xdebug and Eclipse. Eclipse launches a web browser, but the browser tries to access a non-existent file in Eclipse's .app bundle.
2. Xdebug and NetBeans. It does a little bit better; a browser opens a page in /tmp which says "Launching. Please wait…" but nothing happens beyond that.
3. Xdebug and debugclient, the CLI tool which comes with Xdebug. MacPorts (which I used to install PHP and Xdebug) doesn't seem to install this by itself, and when I try compiling it by hand, I get told "you have strange libedit". Installing libedit via MacPorts doesn't solve that.
4. Zend's debugger (the precise name escapes me right now) and Eclipse. I can't recall what the problem was, as this was some time ago, but it didn't work.

With regards to Xdebug, at least, I'm fairly confident I've installed it correctly. It shows up with both a phpinfo() in a PHP file and a php -i in the CLI.

If anyone has managed to get PHP debugging working in some way or other on the Mac, I'd appreciate it if you could share with me how. Littering code with var_dump($foo);die(); gets old quick. Bonus points if it can be done without using some bloatware editor like Eclipse, or that expensive proprietary thing Zend wants to sell me.

My server is connecting to PHP via FastCGI, if that makes a diff.

Answer 1

Been looking for php debugger for osx myself too. This one looks promising: http://www.turingart.com/phpdebugger_lan__en.htm

Answer 2

I guess I don't get bonus points, but Zend Studio works for me on my Mac connecting to Apache running in VMware.

Answer 3

You may want to look into MacGDBp. It's new, free, and the UI looks great. It utilizes the Xdebug PHP extension as well. You can find instructions in the help section, which includes Xdebug configurations, and there's also a nice overview of the app from the guys at Particletree here: Silence The Echo with MacGDBp.

Answer 4

I debug PHP CLI scripts and web probject (thru apache etc) using Eclipse & ZendDebugger all the time.

I answered a similar question over at the following link: click here

Hopefully that's what you're looking for.

Answer 5

Here's how I did it:

1 - Copy the latest version of xdebug.so from http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/Komodo/RemoteDebugging to /usr/libexec.

2 - Add the following to the global php.ini:

zend_extension="/usr/libexec/xdebug.so"
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_host=localhost
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_autostart=1

3 - Restart Apache and run MacGDBp.

Answer 6

I've got it working on my local setup. I posted directions on my blog:

http://littleblackhat.com/blog/?p=12

Answer 7

I use Komodo 5 --- debugging works wonderfully, not only with PHP, but also with Ruby and Python. I mostly use it to debug PHP scripts that are running on a remote server but you can do local stuff as well. It's not free, but assuming your own time is worth something, you will have gotten your money back within a few hours!