• Xampp
• PDT
• Zend Debugger

Install Xampp with Zend Debugger

1. Download & Install latest Xammp Server – Instruction for Installing & Configuring are available @ http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html ( by default Xampp comes with Zend Optimizer)
2. In my Local machine i have installed Xampp package @ c:\xampplite
3. Next is to download and Configure Zend Debugger -  The new location for downloading the Zend debugging PHPextension is http://www.zend.com/products/studio/downloads or we can use the old location  http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/ (old location has libraries only up to PHP 5.2, but if that’s all we need then this will work fine.)
4. After downloading Zend Debugger, the default instructions from README file did not work for me – the PHP refuses to load Zend Debugger before Zend Optimiser. So i need to configure Zend Debugger with Zend Extension Manager & Zend Optimiser.
5. To make it work  i  extracted the contents of the ZendDebugger-5.2.x-cygwin_nt-i386.zip (debugger package file name which i have downloaded using Step 3 URL)  into C:\xampplite\php\zendOptimizer\lib, then i renamed the “ZendDebugger-5.2.x-cygwin_nt-i386″ folder to “Debugger”. Next i renamed the 4_3_x_comp, 5_2_x_comp, etc. folders to php-4.3.x, php-5.2.x etc. (i looked into ..\Optimizer directory for reference). Each …\lib\Debugger\php-X.X.x dir contains ZendDebugger.dll.
6. Using Text Editor edited my PHP.INI @ C:\xampplite\php\php.ini (or C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini –I Used phpinfo() to confirm my path)  and modified the values under the [Zend] section. Following are the list of changes i made

zend_extension_ts = “C:\xampplite\php\zendOptimizer\lib\ZendExtensionManager.dll”
zend_extension_manager.verbose=On
zend_extension_manager.optimizer_ts = “C:\xampplite\php\zendOptimizer\lib\Optimizer”
zend_optimizer.enable_loader = 0
zend_optimizer.optimization_level=15
;zend_optimizer.license_path =
zend_extension_manager.debug_server_ts = “C:\xampplite\php\zendOptimizer\lib\Debugger”
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=never
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1/32
zend_debugger.allow_tunnel=127.0.0.1/32

7. Next restarted Apache, opened http://localhost/xampp/phpinfo.php and verified whether  Zend Debugger is enabled.  Following are the changes i noticed in my phpinfo section
   

Installing Eclipse with Zend Debugger plugin

1. Downloaded and installed PDT – Use the PDT provided by Zend (http://www.zend.com/community/pdt?ecl=EclipseZend)
2. In order to support Drupal Content Types, following are the changes i made to my Eclipse PDT
   • Under Window -> Preferences menu:Expanded the left-hand menu to General -> Content Types. Under Content types on the right, click Text -> PHP Content Type. I added the *.engine, *.theme, *.install, *.inc, *.module *.profile and *.test file
     types so that these files will be recognized as PHP.
   • I also installed Drupal Plug in for Eclipse by using the following steps.  Go to Eclipse and choose the Help menu, then Install New Software. Click the Add button or link and add the following new software site to download the Drupal plugin:
     • Name: XTND.US
Location: http://xtnd.us/downloads/eclipse
3. Then added my drupal folder as php project. Todo this i just created an emty php project and give the project workspace as c://xampplite/htdocs and added my existing drupal folder to this project as a general folder import in eclipse.
4. Then i made some changes to Web browser setting using the following Steps , Opened Window->Preferences->General->Web Browser and set my browser  as external browser and selected one of my browser types ( in my machie i had IE, Mozilla, Default browser) but i went with Mozilla .
5. Next step is to set Zend debugger as the Default PHP debugger for which i followed the steps -  Window->Preferences->PHP->Debug, and set the PHP Debugger option to Zend Debugger
   
6. Once done, next step  is to start debugging for that i right clicked  Index.php and executed the following steps — choose Debug As -> PHP Web Page Option ->Automatically firefox opens and i can see my  project running.
7. Eclipse will also pop up a “Confirm perspective Switch” window –   Clicking [Yes] will open a whole new perspective window and you will see the code being halted at the first active line of code in my Drupal code base.
   
8. I was able to Set break points wherever it is needed and used step into fucntion to see the code flow. I too was able to n set the break points in module files and themes page to debug
9. For debugging other pages i copied the url like ?debug_host=172.16.21.29%2C172.16.24.8%2C127.0.0.1&start_debug=1&debug_port=10000&original_url=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fgala-smf%2Fapplication%2Fsrc%2Findex.php&send_sess_end=1&debug_stop=1&debug_start_session=1&debug_no_cache=1284121076906&debug_session_id=1002 ( eg my sample other page URL  – http://localhost/gala-smf/application/src/html/index.php?debug_host=172.16.21.29%2C172.16.24.8%2C127.0.0.1&start_debug=1&debug_port=10000&original_url=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Fgala-smf%2Fapplication%2Fsrc%2Findex.php&send_sess_end=1&debug_stop=1&debug_start_session=1&debug_no_cache=1284121777640&debug_session_id=1003)
10. Once the debugger is configured , don’t try to access your pages using http://localhost/<application name> or http://127.0.0.1/<application name>, it results in apache crashes, to fix this  try to access the application using the ip address or by using any virtal host URL configured for your application.

Happy debugging, avoid using echo & exit statements