December, 2020

Setup Xdebug3 with PHP7.4, PHPStorm and Laravel Valet

This walkthru assumes that you have Laravel Valet, PHP7.4 installed. If not, follow these instructions.

Install Xdebug

Prepare Pecl pecl channel-update pecl.php.net ; pecl clear-cache
Install Xdebug pecl install xdebug
Restart Laravel Valet valet restart

Let’s see what we got so far:

First check Xdebug is installed: php -m
Check the paths to ini-files php --ini

Your output should look something like this:

Configuration File (php.ini) Path: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4
Loaded Configuration File:         /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/php.ini
Scan for additional .ini files in: /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/conf.d
Additional .ini files parsed:      /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/conf.d/ext-opcache.ini,
/usr/local/etc/php/7.4/conf.d/php-memory-limits.ini

Edit /usr/local/etc/php/7.4/php.ini and Add these lines to your

[xdebug]
zend_extension="xdebug.so" <-- Most likely already there
xdebug.mode=debug
xdebug.client_port="9003"

Please not that the new default port for Xdebug3 is 9003.

Important:
Restart Laravel Valet again.

valet restart

PHPStorm

Next we are going to configure PHPStorm 2020.3 to listen for Xdebug.

Open PHPStorm settings (cmd-,) and check your settings settings.

Languages & Frameworks > PHP > Debug

Make sure Xdebug is listening to port 9003 and ”Can accept external connections” is checked. I like these ones:

Working

Click ”Start listening for debug connections”

Working

Add a breakpoint and reload your page and it should hopefullt work :-)

Working

Profit!

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens

Make sure you have restarted Laravel Valet after installation.
Check that the IDE-key is set in your browser extension

Working

Stops working after an update

If you get similar errors:

Cannot load Xdebug - it was already loaded

Check if your php.ini-file contains zend_extension="xdebug.so" remove this line. The PECL-installer can somethimes add this during upgrades.

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