Xdebug 2.1.0 RC1 released

As earlier announced in my April Fools' announcement and on Xdebug's twitter feed, I'm now releasing Xdebug 2.1.0RC1. This is the first Release Candidate and it addresses a number of issues found in the latest beta. As I usually do in release announcements, I will also be introducing a new feature in Xdebug 2.1 in this one.

In an article that I wrote a few months ago, I illustrated a few different reasons on why the shut-op operator (@) should be avoided. Although there are a few cases where it simple can not be avoided if you want to write notice-free code, the main reason why this operator should be avoided, is because it makes debugging quite a bit more difficult if errors are hidden.

Xdebug is a debugging aid to make debugging easier. So from version 2.1.0 there is a new configuration setting — xdebug.scream — that simply disables the effects of the @ operator. That means that all errors will be shown, of course, still listening to the error_reporting and display_errors settings. This functionality is not a novel thing, and the idea was lifted from the PECL scream package. However, I think this functionality fits in very well with all the other things that Xdebug has to offer.

Just to mention it once more, I have no intention of making Xdebug closed source. I spend a considerable amount of time in adding new features and addressing issues, so I would appreciate it that if consider a donation in case Xdebug has saved you time and effort in debugging your application. If you have comments or suggestions to improve Xdebug, please write to the mailinglist.