issue with debugger extension - MAMP & PHPStorm

Question

Whenever I try debugging php, I keep getting the two following errors…

1. “Connection with Zend Debugger was not established” with a link to ‘Validate installation'
2. “Zend Degubber extension is not installed.” With a link to ‘Show phpinfo.’

After digging around for the last 2 days, I feel like I’ve gotten really close to resolving this but I can’t seem to get past this last hurdle. I'm now stuck at the xdebug.org site where it asked me to run phpinfo and paste the contents into the browser so it could help me to resolve xdebug issues. I did that and it gave me the following info…

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1. Xdebug installed: 2.1.0
2. Server API: Apache 2.0 Handler
3. Windows: no
4. Zend Server: no
5. PHP Version: 5.3.6
6. Zend API nr: 220090626
7. PHP API nr: 20090626
8. Debug Build: no
9. Thread Safe Build: no
10. Configuration File Path: /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/conf
11. Configuration File: /Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/conf/php.ini
12. Extensions directory: /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626

---

It also gave me some instructions with 9 very simple steps. From step 4, it had me do a bit more troubleshooting, telling me to run ‘phpize’, which I did. It said, “perhaps the wrong ‘phpize’ binary is found on the path, you can run configure as follows”

1. "/full/path/to/php/bin/phpize"
2. "./configure --with-php-config=/full/path/to/php/bin/php-config"

the results from the 'phpize' gives me the directory of "/usr/include/php/..." and in my case it should be... “./configure --with-php-config=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin/php-config”. However, when I run './configure...' I get the following error…
“configure: error: cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool in config "."/config”

There’s no “install.sh on my Mac, but there’s a ‘shtool’ and a install-sh. The install-sh is in a ‘python’ directory so I’m assuming it’s not the ‘install-sh’ I need? So I tried running the “configure” command from within the same directory as shtool and it still gave me the “cannot find…” error.

I tried looking up that error, but kept running into roadblocks, mostly with dissimilar environments.

Any ideas are appreciated.

Answer 1

I had the same problem 2 days ago, although I got a slightly different error at the end. The problem is twofold: the wrong PHP being used, and the header files being missing, which phpize needs.

Here's the fix:

• Alter the PATH variable in your ~/.profile to have the MAMP PHP directory FIRST, like this: How to override the path of PHP to use the MAMP path?. You should then find that 'which php' will show you the MAMP version (you will need to close and reopen the terminal).
• You the need to get the MAMP PHP headers and install them, as per the accepted ansswer here: xdebug not loading. not found in phpinfo() after apache restart
• You then need to run ./configure from inside the php headers directory

Phpize and the rest of the xdebug instructions ought to then work.

You will also need to tell PHPStorm that you are using this interpreter rather than the system one, which you can do via the PHP section of the settings.