Laravel Sail XDebug and PhpStorm can't make it work anyhow

Had the same problem and abandoned it 3 months ago. @cvetan : did Lary AI's suggestion work?

No it didn't. Larry's suggestions are pretty generic, which you can find by plain google search. :D

As I said these options don't work at all. Even environment variable options seem not to work. I really havet to ask what kind of development environment is there in sail if you can't do such basic thing as easy or debugging at all?

@cvetan @aylara just try keeping only SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE=develop,debug,coverage in your .env, delete your Servers (PHPStorm -> Settings -> PHP -> Servers), check that in Settings -> PHP -> Debug under section Xdebug Can accept external connections is checked, turn on Start listening for PHP Debug connections.

Get a browser debugging extension like Xdebug helper for Chrome, install it and go to a project page like localhost.

Enable the debugging from the Xdebug helper (should be green colored) and reload the page - it will automatically open a new dialog in your IDE to create a Server - just create it.

Now your Xdebug will be working while browsing but you need to map the local project files path to the absolute container one (/var/www/html) in your server in Settings -> PHP -> Servers. Example: /Users/Plamen/PhpstormProjects/project-name to /var/www/html.

Put a breakpoint and test it.

If you want to start debugging session while running artisan commands you can use debug command instead of artisan.

Seems that the Jetbrains Zero-configuration debugging is working but there is need of such plugin and the 0.0.0.0 server host.

Hope it helps :)

I'd be really keen to hear if you got this working. Slightly different case as I'm working with VS Code but, in my .env I have:

SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE=develop,debug,coverage

And in the docker-compose I have:

XDEBUG_MODE: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE:-on}' XDEBUG_CONFIG: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG:-client_host=host.docker.internal}'

I have VSCode set up with launch.json but I don't hit any breakpoints. I did a simple LAMP stack in docker as a comparison and did get that working with Xdebug

I decided to try a new clean start and set up a new sail app. This time I have had success getting Xdebug working. I added these to .env

SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE=develop,debug

SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG="client_host=host.docker.internal idekey=VSCODE"

And this is the launch.json

{ "version": "0.2.0", "configurations": [ { "name": "Listen for Xdebug", "type": "php", "request": "launch", "port": 9003, "pathMappings": { "/var/www/html": "${workspaceFolder}" }, "hostname": "localhost" } ] }

Hope that helps someone.

I fumbled till I got it to work some time ago but could not later, for the life of me, replicate what I did.

Just came across this well-written article and applied it to a freshly installed Sail-based Laravel on Windows WSL2. It worked perfectly on first attempt, no issues at all.

I had a lot of issues getting this working properly as well with laravel 11 sail and phpstorm. In the end I've figured out that phpstorm 2024.2.3 has an issue with the env settings of xdebug in the docker-compose file when adding an interpreter using docker-compose option, as the phpstorm search for the binary stops responding entirely. Removing those xdebug env variables from docker-compose means that you have to change the dockerfile (sail artisan sail:publish will put those in a docker folder). Add this directly below the other RUN group that installs php and dependencies. Replace the 8.3 with the version you're using. This will add xdebug 3 config to the cli php.ini file.

RUN echo "[XDebug]" > /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini
&& echo "xdebug.mode = debug" >> /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini
&& echo "xdebug.discover_client_host = true" >> /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini
&& echo "xdebug.client_host = host.docker.internal" >> /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini
&& echo "xdebug.client_port = 9003" >> /etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini

Rebuild with sail build (--no-cache if you run into issues)

Now php will find the interpreter without freezing and you can setup a server that receives the xdebug calls. It's important that you set the lifecycle to 'Connect to existing container' when adding the interpreter using docker-compose option.

Setting up servers: I have one 0.0.0.0 with mapping to /var/www/html and one localhost to the same folder /var/www/html. Why you need two? Because php serve/browser triggered launches in a different context compared to cli launched php files and tests.

Another issue is where you've got your 'local files' located. For some reason when I map a network drive to \wsl$ phpstorm gets into all kinds of issues trying to map docker to local files.

After a lot of trial and error I've found out the best way to setup phpstorm is to place your local files in \wsl$\home<username> and in a foldere there wherever you like. This is for windows obviously.

Then go in explorer to \wsl$\home<username> and drag the laravel project folder onto the phpstorm icon on your desktop. This will open the folder inside phpstorm using UNC paths which it blocks when you use the normal way of setting up the development environment.

This will correctly map your 'local' files in wsl to the docker files when triggering a xdebug event. This also works with CLI started php files (ie right clicking>run or debug in phpstorm project files tree) and PHPUnit and Pest.

I've made a dockerfile that includes apache instead of php serve, and there was more config work to be done to get xdebug working from browser, cli and unit tests. Only issue that I have is that sail artisan also triggers the debugger which is a bit annoying. I need to turn off debugging in phpstorm to get stop it from triggering temporarily.

I also had the same issue and after a day I managed to solve it. My solution was to add this to docker-compose.yml:

XDEBUG_MODE: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE:-debug}'
XDEBUG_CONFIG: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG:-client_host=host.docker.internal}'

Then in PHP storm I added a server 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost (as some before suggested) and added the mappings to /var/www/html.

I didn't add anything to .env or to the Dockerfile (well I did when I was trying out stuff but in the end that was not the problem).

I am running the latest PHP Storm (2024.2.4) on Sonoma macOS.

P.S.: What you must NOT do is to map the port 9003 to 9003, which was a suggestion by ChatGPT. So that means to NOT have this line in docker-compose.yml

ports:
    - '9003:9003'