Xdebug Update: February 2020
Another month, another monthly update where I explain what happened with Xdebug development in this past month. It will be published on the first Tuesday after the 5th of each month. Patreon supporters will get it earlier, on the first of each month. You can become a patron here to support my work on Xdebug. If you are leading a team or company, then it is also possible to support Xdebug through a subscription.
In February, I worked on Xdebug for just over 75 hours, on the following things:
PHP 8 Compatibility
Although PHP 8 is no where near being released, I am keeping Xdebug's master branch in line with PHP's master branch. A few features have been added to PHP 8 that ended up breaking some code and tests, and some additions to the PHP DOM extension required work on upgrading test cases. When PHP 8 comes out, I am intending to have Xdebug ready to go with it. Hopefully, that will be Xdebug 3.0.
dbgpClient and dbgpProxy
I have now finished work on early-release versions of a DBGp Client (dbgpClient) and DBGp Proxy (dbgpProxy). These tools are written in Go, and binaries can be downloaded from the download page. Source code is not yet available, but I am intending to open that at some point in the near future.
For Xdebug Cloud I can no longer have the debugging protocol going over the network unencrypted. I am therefore working at including SSL support in Xdebug, as well as in the dbgpClient and dbgpProxy tools. The tools already have support as it was easy to add that in Go, but Xdebug does not yet. I've done research and selected BearSSL to provide this.
Asynchronous Debugging Support
Robert Lu has been working on asynchronous support in Xdebug's debugging protocol for a while, the #1016: Support for pause-execution issue. After extensive testing, review, and reworking of the patch by Robert and I, this patch finally landed in Xdebug. The asynchronous support allows you to pause scripts while they are running without a breakpoint to have been hit. This feature needs support in a debugging client, which actively needs to opt into this behaviour. The new dbgpClient from the previous section supports this.
I will be working with purveyors of IDE to also include "pause-exection" in their feature set.
Business Supporter Scheme and Funding
In February, a few new supporters signed up. They are:
Supermetrics, Private Packagist, and CHECK24.
Thanks!
If you, or your company, would also like to support Xdebug, head over to the support page!
Besides business support, I also maintain a Patreon page and a profile on GitHub sponsors.
Podcast
The PHP Internals News continues its second season. In this weekly podcast, I discuss in 15-30 minutes, proposed new features to the PHP language with fellow PHP internals developers. It is available on Spotify and iTunes, and through an RSS Feed. In the first episode I spoke with Nikita Popov about Preloading and WeakMaps.
Life Line
I walked 8.5km in 1h25m28s
I walked 8.1km in 1h21m10s
I walked 0.8km in 9m03s
I walked 4.8km in 50m12s
Went for a 20k walk through Bushy Park, along the Thames, and through Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common. It was a bit nippy!
I hiked 19.3km in 3h52m02s
Updated a pub
I walked 4.6km in 44m50s
I walked 4.9km in 47m58s
Update Westbourne Green area, now that it is open
I walked 11.9km in 2h3m03s
I walked 9.8km in 1h47m38s
I walked 10.2km in 1h34m25s
Whoop! FOSDEM travel and hotel booked. See you in Brussels at the end of January?
I walked 10.6km in 1h48m23s
I walked 3.0km in 33m38s
I walked 0.6km in 11m26s
I walked 6.5km in 1h17m46s
Updated a cafe
Updated a museum
I walked 1.1km in 12m41s
Updated a bench and a waste_basket
Updated a bench
Updated a bench
Updated a bench


Shortlink
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