Xdebug is a PHP extension that provides debugging, profiling and diagnostic tools for developers. It helps identify errors, investigate application behaviour and analyse performance problems in PHP code.
The extension integrates with development environments such as PhpStorm and Visual Studio Code, allowing developers to step through scripts, inspect variables and follow execution paths. It also provides tools for analysing function calls, memory usage and test coverage.
Xdebug can be used when developing web applications or command-line scripts. Its individual capabilities can be enabled as needed, allowing developers to concentrate on a particular debugging or performance analysis task.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Interactive step debugging through IDEs and editors supporting the DBGp protocol, including PhpStorm and Visual Studio Code.
- Set breakpoints, step through code, inspect variables and evaluate expressions while an application executes.
- Enhanced error reporting with detailed stack traces showing function calls, arguments, file names and line numbers.
- Improves PHP’s var_dump() function with formatted output for arrays, objects and nested data structures.
- Record function calls, arguments, return values and variable assignments to trace application execution.
- Profile PHP applications to identify performance bottlenecks and excessive memory consumption, with output compatible with KCacheGrind and QCacheGrind.
- Generate trace data for CPU-time and memory-usage flame graphs, which can be visualised using external tools.
- Collect code coverage information, including executed lines, branch coverage and path coverage, for use with testing frameworks such as PHPUnit.
- Analyse garbage collection activity through dedicated statistics.
- Detect excessive recursion and provide diagnostic information about execution and memory usage.
- Activate debugging, tracing and profiling selectively using request triggers or environment variables.
- Supports remote debugging, allowing PHP applications running on a server to communicate with a developer’s local IDE.
- Provides a command-line debugging client for interactive debugging without a graphical IDE.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/xdebug/xdebug
Support:
Developer: Derick Rethans
License: Xdebug License v1.03
Xdebug is written in PHP and C. Learn PHP with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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