I don't do Patreon, but I do want to contribute. Are there other ways? Paypal?

I love Xdebug as it is. Because it's so useful, not because it's no easy. Everybody should use it. Making it easier and faster would be a great start!

Hi Derick. I'd be interested to hear why each new version of PHP requires specific support in Xdebug, rather than "just working". Maybe you could do a post on that? :)

Im in! Will support this undertaking.

Xdebug is key to almost everything I do in PHP, and I use it everyday. Without it, PHP would not have the same value to me, and I'm not sure that I would even continue using PHP. IMO, it is critical that Xdebug's core functionality remains FOSS, though I understand the need for a sustainable model.

I have seen some other developers struggle to get started with Xdebug, even though they really want to use it. In order to get a larger userbase, it may be worthwhile to consider ease-of-use so that a beginner has some intuition as to why Xdebug is not working for them if it is not configured correctly.

I signed up on Patreon. If anyone sees this and are at all interested in the future of PHP, I encourage you to do the same.

Throw up both Bitcoin and Ethereum addresses. I'll donate.

I propose that you work on making it mindnumbingly easy to use xdebug. You say that you talked to users who mention that it’s too difficult to set up, and that you always concluded that it was caused by external tools or IDEs, but I think how you should treat these comments is to see it as a signal from the user that it’s actually not so easy to start using the software.

For example, if you go and have a look at the Reddit thread about this post, you will see that some of the most highly voted comments are about how people try to use xdebug but gave up. Basically, I think you should treat that as being unacceptable. Potential users not being able to use your software is bad for you and bad for them.

Perhaps it’s an idea to store all related settings into a JSON file, that people could commit to their repositories? At the first start up this JSON file can then be read and used to set up xdebug? Or perhaps it’s better to investigate some sort of server-client procedure with a configuration exchange in the beginning of a new connection? I don’t know. I am not familiar enough with the internals to make a good suggestion here.

I just think that it should be much easier to start using your software, it should basically be so simple that an idiot can do it with his eyes closed, every time, without fail, and without doing any configuration. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for all your great work over the years!

I subscribed to Patreon for an 5 USD per month support. Thank you for your support.

Hi Derick,

I was wondering if you could set up a corporate sponsors page on your site where we can have a small banner and a link if we pay you a monthly fee?

What do you think?

Cheers

Nolwenn

Hi!

Thanks for all the comments, I'll reply to them all in this comment of my own:

@Rudie: I don't have PayPal, as they're keen on holding on to money without telling me why, and making me wait for it. I am imploring whether I can sell licences, but that will likely have to be done more formally (with an invoice, and a bank transfer, or something like that).

@Jonathan: Each PHP version changes the internals of the language. Xdebug needs to dive deep into these internals to be able to do what it does. I can explain that better with a real example, and will endeavour to write a post when this happens the next time—I already know there are a few changes needed for PHP 7.4.

@Theodore: I don't know how Bitcoin and/or Ethereum work really. I might consider looking at that in the future, but right now, I don't have any plans to create accounts and wallets for them.

@Zach, @Ed, and @Robbert: Thanks for your comments.

@Nolwenn: Thanks for the suggestion. I have no plans to create an area where I provide links to companies that want to sponsor. I have already received many of these requests in the past, and most of them were dodgy outfits. Because I don't really want to say yes to some, and no to others, I have long ago decided that I don't want to go this route.

cheers,

Derick

Would be great if we could buy some cool Xdebug elephants!

Have you considered https://leanpub.com?

@Willem: Yes, that would be nice, but it's also a lot of work, and I'm not sure for how much gain...

@Stephen: Yes, I have heard of leanpub.com, and if I would do a bit, I would likely go that route.

Re: Modes: Have you considered splitting xdebug into different modules?

Profiler and debugger are not intended to be run together, even though they share a lot of common code. Which would reduce configuration issue by a lot.

I already used to use a wrapper to run scripts with debugger loaded, so that my regular maintenance tasks aren't influenced by xdebug. It just works, like if I'm running a different SAPI.

The easiest way to setup xdebug with docker is to realise that localhost is relative and 127.001 is too. Therefore what I have done in the past is create an ip alias on your machine to a pretty obscure ip nobody would use, like 10.254.254.254 and then inside your docker container, target that instead of localhost or trying to set your machines ip address which can change on a daily/hotspot basis.

What this does is mean you have a static local ip address you can know it'll always be free and then if you target port 9001 or whatever port you prefer, then you can easily setup your local IDE to receive connections.

If you try to do this any other way, you'll just run into a cloud of other problems.

To add an ip alias, do this. MacOs: sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 10.254.254.254 Linux: sudo ip addr add 10.254.254.254/24 dev lo label lo:40

Then in our docker container we set all sorts of environment variables to set the data inside the phpfpm container

we have a script which we run in our entrypoint which does sed-replaces of all the environment variables into the xdebug.ini file, the code looks like this: entrypoint.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# Configure XDebug
XDEBUG_INI=/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/xdebug.ini

if [[ "${XDEBUG_ENABLE}" == "1" ]]; then
    echo "Enabling XDebug Configuration"
    # we use tilde ~ here instead of / because of path names
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_IDE_KEY__~${XDEBUG_IDE_KEY}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_ENABLE__~${XDEBUG_ENABLE}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_AUTOSTART__~${XDEBUG_AUTOSTART}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_HOST__~${XDEBUG_HOST}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_PORT__~${XDEBUG_PORT}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_LOG_DIR__~${XDEBUG_LOG_DIR}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE__~${XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER__~${XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER_VALUE__~${XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER_VALUE}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}
    sed -i "s~__XDEBUG_PROFILER_OUTPUT_DIR__~${XDEBUG_PROFILER_OUTPUT_DIR}~g" ${XDEBUG_INI}

    echo "" > ${XDEBUG_LOG_DIR}/xdebug.log
    chown www-data:www-data ${XDEBUG_LOG_DIR}/xdebug.log
    chmod 775 ${XDEBUG_LOG_DIR}/xdebug.log

    # we need write permissions to write the cachegrind files that the profiler generates
    if [[ "${XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER}" == "1" ]] || [[ "${XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE}" == "1" ]]; then
        chown www-data:www-data ${XDEBUG_PROFILER_OUTPUT_DIR}
        chmod 775 ${XDEBUG_PROFILER_OUTPUT_DIR}
    fi
else
    echo "Disabling XDebug Configuration"
    rm -f ${XDEBUG_INI}
    rm -f ${XDEBUG_LOG_DIR}/xdebug.log
fi

our xdebug.ini looks like this:

[xdebug]
zend_extension = xdebug.so

xdebug.idekey=__XDEBUG_IDE_KEY__
xdebug.overload_var_dump=0
xdebug.var_display_max_depth=10
xdebug.cli_color=1

xdebug.remote_connect_back=0
xdebug.remote_autostart=__XDEBUG_AUTOSTART__
xdebug.remote_enable=__XDEBUG_ENABLE__
; Do not change this token in the repository its replaced by the entrypoint with your machines current ip
; If you change networks, wifi, etc, your computers ip address may change and this requires a restart of the container
xdebug.remote_host=__XDEBUG_HOST__
; Do not change this port, but you cannot use port 9000, because php-fpm is using that
xdebug.remote_port=__XDEBUG_PORT__
xdebug.remote_log=__XDEBUG_LOG_DIR__/xdebug.log

xdebug.profiler_enable=__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE__
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger=__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER__
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger_value=__XDEBUG_PROFILER_ENABLE_TRIGGER_VALUE__
xdebug.profiler_output_dir=__XDEBUG_PROFILER_OUTPUT_DIR__

xdebug.auto_trace=0
xdebug.collect_params=4
xdebug.show_mem_delta=1
xdebug.trace_enable_trigger=1
xdebug.trace_output_dir=__XDEBUG_LOG_DIR__

This setup works really well for us. I hope it helps other people having an easier time setting up their xdebug with dockder