OOTB Xdebug support for PhpStorm

[phenaproxima]

I'm not sure if Drupal VM already supports this, but I had to do a bit of work in order to get Xdebug talking to PhpStorm.

I had to alter my /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/xdebug.ini as follows:

xdebug.default_enable = 1 ; Was 0
xdebug.remote_enable = true ; Was false
xdebug.remote_connect_back = true ; Was false
xdebug.remote_host = 10.0.2.2 ; Was localhost
xdebug.idekey = "vagrant" ; Was sublime

Is there any chance of having this be Drupal VM's default configuration, or somehow make it very easy to configure Xdebug this way in config.yml?

[geerlingguy]

All of these variables can easily be overridden inside your config.yml file. See https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-php-xdebug (the README) for examples of variables you can set. For example:

php_xdebug_default_enable: 1
php_xdebug_remote_enable: "true"
php_xdebug_remote_connect_back: "true"
php_xdebug_remote_host: 10.0.2.2.
php_xdebug_idekey: vagrant

[phenaproxima]

Brilliant. Thank you!

[kevinquillen]

Why wouldn't xdebug just be enabled by default?

[geerlingguy]

@kevinquillen - Because Xdebug incurs a non-trival amount of overhead, and I (and many others) like to develop without it enabled most of the time, and only enable it as-needed. The two reasons for this (for me) are:

1. Performance overhead—memory and resource usage are more like real-world when xdebug is disabled.
2. 99% of the time, I don't need all the extra information Xdebug outputs in error logs, and don't need any extra information beyond what I can git dumping a variable by hand.

[geerlingguy]

@kevinquillen - I've updated the documentation here: http://docs.drupalvm.com/en/latest/extras/xdebug/

[kostajh]

@geerlingguy with the out of the box configuration provided by Drupal VM, have you gotten PhpStorm to debug Behat scripts running in the VM? I have a remote Behat configuration set up, and it's using Drupal VM's php binary, so I have no issues running Behat tests from within Drupal VM using PhpStorm. But debugging said configuration doesn't work.

According to this, xdebug_autostart should be 1 and connect_back should be false, these are different values than the VM provides. I've tried changing those myself within the VM, though, without success.

[geerlingguy]

@kostajh - I, personally, have not, as I don't use PhpStorm :(

But I'm guessing someone has, and hopefully you can find that person to help; did anything in the docs.drupalvm.com section on xdebug help?

[kostajh]

@geerlingguy no, unfortunately. The same would apply for Sublime Text though. (Assuming that's what you are using.) Are you able to execute a PHP script from the command line within the VM, and have Sublime Text's XDebug client connect?

[geerlingguy]

@kostajh - Last time I did was at least a few months ago, but when I did, I did it using the instructions in the docs (http://docs.drupalvm.com/en/latest/extras/xdebug/)... so something may have changed, or a port might not be open that's required... something like that.