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To: Lester Caine <lester@lsces.co.uk>
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Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:37:27 +0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHPDBG scope
From: pthreads@pthreads.org (Joe Watkins)

On Tue, 2014-11-04 at 09:19 +0000, Lester Caine wrote:
> On 04/11/14 06:00, Joe Watkins wrote:
> > I'm not saying we should not extend the features of phpdbg, but, we
> > should do it knowing what it actually is, knowing that it is
> > fundamentally different to xdebug.
> 
> Having just hit another 'white screen' problem on a site I'm trying to
> update, I do wonder if there is an alternative debug approach that would
> help speed the process. I have used xdebug in the past, but on the whole
> the debug tools built into the framework allow fairly quick tracking of
> a problem and isolating it.

If you were to enable xdebug, I am sure it could give you some insight.

As could switching all errors to exceptions temporarily, maybe.

A white screen often has the root cause suppressed by error_level,
executing in the appropriate way in phpdbg would break on errors,
telling you where the problem originates, possibly.

> 
> So the question is ... just where are the strengths of each and is
> either useful for day to day debugging, or more appropriate for
> debugging the internal operation of PHP?
> 

A considerable strength of a standalone debugger, is that it is
standalone :)

You don't need an IDE or any other client, a server, or any other
software to debug some code, you just need a debugger.

We don't deploy code like this however, so while phpdbg might be able to
provide some insight in some cases, xdebug is how we debug code that is
deployed in a normal server environment.

It depends what you do day-to-day, as mentioned, if you are someone
comfortable with, or who spends a considerable amount of time in a
console, for whatever reason, then phpdbg can certainly be a useful
tool.

When it comes to debugging our deployments however, nothing has changed.

> -- 
> Lester Caine - G8HFL
> -----------------------------
> Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
> L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
> EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
> Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
> Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
> 

Cheers
Joe