Config change and documentation for debugging via Xdebug

[weitzman]

Vlad has good instructions for profiling (via Xdebug and XHProf) but cryptic instructions for debugging. It says To use the debugger, point your IDE at this box IP address ({{ boxipaddress }}) and use port 9000. I was unable to "point my IDE" at 192.168.100.100. Instead, I configured the VM to point to the host. My proposal:

1. During setup, we set xdebug.remote_host=192.168.100.1 in php.ini. That instructs the Vagrant instance to contact the host in order to connect to a debug client. 192.168.100.1 is what my host shows for an IP. If this changes for other configs, we just have to put a hostname or IP for the host here.
2. We add documentation to README.md:
   1. On the host, just start your debug Listener with default settings (Port 9000. IDEKey does not matter).
   2. Request any page with a querystring like http://www.drupal.local?XDEBUG_SESSION_START=foo. The value 'foo' does not matter - all values will cause PHP in the VM to connect to the host.
   3. When your IDE receives a connection from the VM, it should prompt you to create a Path Mapping. This helps your IDE pull up an editable file instead of a read-only copy thats provided by Xdebug.

We could add some pictures accompany these instructions.

[philipnorton42]

Hi weitzman. Thanks for your suggestions and input over the past few days. I've been busy at work and conferences recently so I haven't had much time to look into the issues you've been having. I'll take a look at your issues as soon as I can, hopefully this week :) Thanks! Phil

[philipnorton42]

Note to add these instructions to the documentation: http://vlad-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/applications/xdebug/

https://github.com/hashbangcode/vlad-docs/blob/master/applications/xdebug.md

[kevinquillen]

This is the way I do it - in my case I use PHPStorm, and I configure the debugging connection to point to the hostname. Works every time. I cannot speak for other IDEs, but PHPStorm is very well integrated with XDebug. You can add a IDEKEY, I tend to use PHPSTORM, and use the XDebug bookmarklets to trigger xdebug to start or stop.

https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/marklets/

The only path mapping I need to do is telling PHPStorm where the docroot is on the VM, which is quite simple in Vlad (/var/www/site/sitename).

This setup literally takes less than 30 seconds and has always worked for me in PHPStorm.. I would expect a similar experience in Netbeans or Eclipse and other IDEs with a debugger config.

[dixhuit]

This is handy info, I think we should add this to the new docs. Thanks @kevinquillen !

[...] where the docroot is on the VM, which is quite simple in Vlad (/var/www/site/sitename).

Minor correction for anyone following along: the guest box's docroot is /var/www/site/docroot.

[dixhuit]

@kevinquillen Out of interest, how do you have your interpreter setup in PHPStorm for this? Do you use the "SSH Credentials" or "Vagrant" config option?

[kevinquillen]

I'll have to check.

On Saturday, February 21, 2015, Dan Bohea notifications@github.com wrote:

@kevinquillen https://github.com/kevinquillen Out of interest, how do you have your interpreter setup in PHPStorm for this? Do you use the "SSH Credentials" or "Vagrant" config option?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/hashbangcode/vlad/issues/99#issuecomment-75368660.

[kevinquillen]

My PHP interpreter I have set to 5.5 (the one that ships with OSX).

I have never utilized the Vagrant integration in PHPStorm yet, nor the SSH Terminal options. I used to use the built in terminal plugin, but found that there were some oddities in using it vs the Terminal app.

When configuring XDebug, PHPUnit or Behat debugger tools, I just point it to the hostname specified in Vlad, and the path mapping I set to /var/www/site/docroot. That has always worked for the debugger for me, no problem.

My site files (Drupal) reside on my local machine, while Vlad is hosting it on Apache.

[philipnorton42]

All this has been added to the documentation, with a few extra details. Feel free to add more details via the docs repo here: https://github.com/hashbangcode/vlad-docs