pebugger

Pebugger is a powerful software tool designed for developers and programmers who work with PHP. It is an interactive command-line based debugger written in PHP and closely resembles the popular gdb debugger. Based on the dbgp client, the software is currently in the early stages of development, although it's quite stable and usable, lacking only a few critical features.

With Pebugger, developers can set up breakpoints, step through code, and query variables easily. Installing the software requires PHP5, Xdebug, readline, and CLI support in PHP, which is already enabled by default. Xdebug can be installed through pecl install xdebug, and you need to add zend_extension=xdebug.so to your php.ini.

The readline extension provides several line-editing advantages such as tab completion, command history, and bash-like user interfaces to Pebugger. Compiling the extension requires the addition of '--with-readline' or '--with-readline=shared' to the configure command.

Pebugger provides several notable features such as accepting connections from specific hosts or ide keys with the 'set accept/idekey' command. It also allows developers to start scripts from the debugger through the 'start' command, albeit depending on the 'nohup' Unix command. There is also an 'eval' command for evaluating some php code and an 'alias' command for defining shortcuts to execute commonly used debug commands.

With Pebugger, developers will have an easier time debugging PHP code, significantly reducing development time and making it more efficient. Installing the software is easy, and any issues can be quickly addressed using the online resources and user communities available.