ddev-php-debugger

A DDEV addon that replaces Xdebug with php-debugger — a lightweight fork focused on step-debugging only.

Xdebug adds ~324% overhead even when loaded but inactive. php-debugger strips profiling and coverage to achieve only ~4% overhead, while remaining a drop-in replacement for step-debugging (same DBGp protocol, same xdebug.* INI settings).

Requirements

DDEV >= v1.24.0
PHP 8.2 or later
Any architecture: pre-built binaries for amd64, compiles from source on arm64 (Apple Silicon)

Install

ddev add-on get jeandavid/ddev-php-debugger
ddev restart

For local development / testing:

ddev add-on get /path/to/this/repo
ddev restart

Usage

The addon is transparent — use DDEV’s built-in xdebug commands as usual:

# Enable step-debugging (now powered by php-debugger)
ddev xdebug on

# Verify
ddev exec php -v
# Shows: "with PHP Debugger v0.1.0-dev"

# Disable
ddev xdebug off

Your IDE configuration (PHPStorm, VS Code, etc.) remains unchanged — php-debugger speaks the same DBGp protocol.

How it works

At container build time, the addon:

Detects the PHP version and architecture
On amd64: downloads the matching pre-built binary from GitHub releases
On arm64: compiles php-debugger from source (first build takes ~40s)
Backs up the original xdebug.so → xdebug.so.original
Replaces xdebug.so with the php-debugger binary

The addon also overrides xdebug.mode to debug (instead of DDEV’s default debug,develop) since php-debugger only supports step-debugging.

This means ddev xdebug on loads php-debugger instead of Xdebug, with zero UX change.

Revert to Xdebug

ddev add-on remove php-debugger
ddev restart

This removes the custom Dockerfile — the next build uses the stock Xdebug.

Running tests

bats tests/test.bats