1. First, you should start with Ruby installed from the RubyInstaller. If you have any problems with getting debugging working, I would suggest installing Ruby fresh from here and trying again.
2. Second, you need to install DevKit. Download DevKit from the RubyInstaller page, then follow the installation instructions on the Development Kit page. Their instructions are thorough, so I won’t reproduce them here. The DevKit install has changed recently and this was part of my problem getting the debugging gem installed.
3. Install the ruby-debug-ide19 gem with the following command line.

   gem install ruby-debug-ide19 –platform=ruby

4. You should now be able to debug in RubyMine. When I started debugging in RubyMine, it prompted to install additional debugging gems. I allowed it and they installed fine and debugging started.

1. Set a breakpoint by clicking in the gutter where you want the breakpoint

   

2. Select your run/debug configuration in the toolbar and click on the Debug button

   

3. Visit the page you want to debug in your browser. You should hit the breakpoint and see the callstack and the values of all the variables in scope.

   

4. You should now be able to step through the code. See the RubyMine debugging documentation for more help.

Install and Configure Xdebug for PHP

The first thing you need to do is get the Xdebug extension for PHP installed and configured. Luckily, XAMPP ships with Xdebug and has the configuration already in php.ini, so you just need to make some minor changes and restart Apache.

1. If you are also using XAMPP, skip this step. If you are using an install of PHP without the Xdebug extension, go to the Xdebug Find Binary page, paste in the output of phpinfo() or php –i and they will provide a link to the extension and custom installation instructions.
2. Open php.ini in your favourite editor. For XAMPP, it is likely in C:\xampp\php.
3. Find and uncomment the extension.

   zend_extension = "C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"

4. Find the [XDebug] section and uncomment and/or edit the following values. Many of these are defaults, but I am listing them just in case you have different values.

   xdebug.profiler_enable = 1
   xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger = 1
   xdebug.remote_enable = 1
   xdebug.remote_host = "localhost"
   xdebug.remote_handler = "dbgp"
   xdebug.remote_mode = "req"
   xdebug.remote_port = 9000
   xdebug.trace_output_dir = "C:\xampp\tmp"

5. Restart Apache with the XAMPP control panel.
6. Bring up http://localhost/xampp/ and view phpinfo(). You should see Xdebug mentioned twice, once under the Zend engine and then as a PHP module.

   

   

7. You are done and ready to debug.

Debug with NetBeans

What is not to love about NetBeans? You can use it for Java, PHP, Ruby, Html and C/C++. It integrates well with many bug tracking and source control systems. It provides IntelliSense, database management, works great with Smarty templates and allows you to debug your code. If you haven’t tried NetBeans yet, I highly recommend it.

1. Start the IDE and load your PHP project. In the Project window, right click on your project and select Properties. Go to the Run Configuration node. You should be running as a Local Web Site. The Project URL should point to the root of your project directory and the Index File should be the file you want to launch into.
2. Right click again on your project. You can select Debug from here and get going right away, but if you first select Set as Main Project, you can just launch into the debugger with the Debug Main Project button on the toolbar or Ctrl+F5. (If Debug is not enabled, you probably need to enable the PHP plugin in NetBeans. Go to Tools | Plugins, click the Installed tab and make sure PHP is enabled.

   

3. When you start debugging, NetBeans will launch the browser to your start page. Notice how it appended the variable XDEBUG_SESSION_START=netbeans-xdebug to the end of the URL to start Apache debugging. If you see any Windows Firewall prompts at this point, accept them.
4. As the page loads, NetBeans will break on the first line of PHP code. The line will be highlighted and there will be a little green arrow in the margin to indicate the current line of execution.
   
   
5. Congratulations, you are debugging. From here, you can set breakpoints by right clicking on the margin of your code and selecting Breakpoint | Toggle Line Breakpoint. You can step through code (F8) using the debug toolbar (if you don’t see it, right click on the toolbars and enable it.) You can inspect or even change variables and view the call stack.

   

6. If you are new to debugging code, read more about what you can do in the article on the NetBeans site,

   Debugging PHP Source Code in the NetBeans IDE.

If I missed anything or you have any other suggestions, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

In the fine, time honored tradition, I have continued to update with each new Visual Studio release and have finally done so for Visual Studio 2010.

To install, download, unzip and right click and install the INF file, it will add a “VS 2010 Cmd Prompt Here” menu item when you right click on a folder in Explorer. Clicking on the menu item will launch a DOS prompt in that directory with all of the Visual Studio and .NET paths set correctly.

• Visual Studio 2010 Command Prompt Here (x86)
• Visual Studio 2010 Command Prompt Here (x64)

This assumes that you have installed Visual Studio to the default directory on the C drive. If that is not the case, edit the INF file and change line 38 to the correct path for your installation.

If you haven’t written a macro before, here are the steps.

1. In Visual Studio, go to Tools | Macros | Macros IDE. A new window should open and in the Project Explorer, the MyMacros project should be open.
2. Right click on the MyMacros project and select Add | Add Module. Name it CppUtilities.  The CppUtilities should open in the editor window.
3. Add the code from below into the module and save the project.

‘=====================================================================
‘ If the currently open document is a CPP or an H file, attempts to
‘ switch between the CPP and the H file.
‘=====================================================================
Public Sub SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader()
  Dim currentDocument As String
  Dim targetDocument As String

  currentDocument = ActiveDocument.FullName

  If currentDocument.EndsWith(“.cpp”, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Then
    targetDocument = Left(currentDocument, Len(currentDocument) - 3) + “h”
    OpenDocument(targetDocument)
  ElseIf currentDocument.EndsWith(“.h”, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Then
    targetDocument = Left(currentDocument, Len(currentDocument) - 1) + “cpp”
    OpenDocument(targetDocument)
  End If

End Sub

‘=====================================================================
‘ Given a document name, attempts to activate it if it is already open,
‘ otherwise attempts to open it.
‘=====================================================================
Private Sub OpenDocument(ByRef documentName As String)
  Dim document As EnvDTE.Document
  Dim activatedTarget As Boolean
  activatedTarget = False

  For Each document In Application.Documents
    If document.FullName = documentName And document.Windows.Count > 0 Then
      document.Activate()
      activatedTarget = True
      Exit For
    End If
  Next
  If Not activatedTarget Then
    Application.Documents.Open(documentName, “Text”)
  End If
End Sub

If you switch back to Visual Studio and open the Macro Explorer, you should see the new module CppUtilities and the new macro SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader in the tree.  You could run the macro from here, but it is much easier to bind it to a keystroke.

1. Click on Tools | Options then go to the Environment | Keyboard tab.
2. In the Show commands containing: box, type CppUtilities. This should filter the list down to one entry, Macros.MyMacros.CppUtilitities.SwitchBetweenSourceAndHeader.
3. Click on the Press shortcut keys: text box and then press the keystroke you would like to use to run the macro. If the keystroke is already used, it will show you below in the Shortcut currently used by: dropdown.  When you find one that is unused, click the Assign button to use it.  I use Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Bkspce.
4. Click OK then open a CPP or H file and give it a try.

1. Click in the Find box in the toolbar,
2. Type >of followed by a space, then begin the name of the file you are looking for.
3. An auto-complete drop down will appear as you type filtering all the files in all your projects in your solution. Continue typing until the list is short enough to fine the one you want. Select it and hit enter.
4. The file will open in the editor.

Update: After this post made the front page of DotNetKicks, Aaron Lerch wrote a great post on his blog with more things that you can do with the find combo. One thing that is very useful is that with the >, you can issue any command, the alias >of mentioned here is just one of many. For a list of the commands, check out this MSDN page.

Another useful tip is that Ctrl+D or Ctrl+/ will automatically jump to the find box, so your hands don’t even need to leave your keyboard.

Update: This trick was also mentioned on Just Sayin More Words as a part of his Stupid Visual Studio Trick series. Thanks.