I am using Netbeans 6.9 on Fedora 14 for Web development. I have enabled PHP debugging for making PHP development easier. Here is how you can do it too.

Install and enable xdebug

Use yum to install php-pecl-xdebug:

sudo yum install php-pecl-xdebug

Now, open the file /etc/php.d/xdebug.ini in a text editor as root. I use nano:

sudo nano /etc/php.d/xdebug.ini

Now , make sure the following options are set enabled in ini:

; Enable xdebug extension module
zend_extension=/usr/lib/php/modules/xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=on
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_host=localhost
xdebug.remote_port=9000

Allow port for xdebug

sudo semanage port -a -t http_port_t -p tcp 9000

Restart Apache:

sudo service httpd restart

Configure Netbeans to use PHP debugger

Now, open up the file /usr/share/netbeans/6.9/etc/netbeans.conf in a text editor and add the text “-J-Dorg.netbeans.modules.php.dbgp.level=400″ in netbeans_default_options so that the line looks somewhat like this:

netbeans_default_options="-J-client -J-Xss2m -J-Xms32m -J-XX:PermSize=32m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=200m -J-Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -J-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -J-Dorg.netbeans.modules.php.dbgp.level=400"

Restart netbeans and given that you have configured the project directories properly, you should be able to click on the debug button and start debugging PHP file.