Setting up xDebug on MacOS

Published on June 02, 2021

This guide is based on the works of Asrar from dev.to and adapted to PHP 8.

If you dont have PHP 8 already install it using brew: brew install php autoconf

Download the latest version of xDebug.

Then build and install the extension.

For example:

wget https://xdebug.org/files/xdebug-3.0.4.tgz
extract xdebug-3.0.4.tgz

cd xdebug-3.0.4
phpize
./configure
make

mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/php/extensions
mv modules/xdebug.so /usr/local/lib/php/extensions
cd ..
rm -rf xdebug-3.0.4

# Find the path to your php.ini
php --ini # e.g. /usr/local/etc/php/8.0/php.ini
echo "zend_extension=/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/xdebug.so" >> /usr/local/etc/php/8.0/php.ini

Next up it should look something like this:

Dominik Bauernfeind

Dominik Bauernfeind

Setting up xDebug on MacOS