What does “XDEBUG NOT LOADED AS ZEND EXTENSION” warning means?

Question

Xdebug is loaded, but not loaded as a zend extension. What does it mean? How to resolve this problem?

Answer 1

If you end up here while trying to build xdebug, then it means you have built it as a "static" extension (not a zend one).

You can use configure --with-xdebug=shared to build it as a shared extension (dll/so; you should see a table showing that xdebug is now configured to be built as a shared extension instead of a static one) so it can be loaded as a zend extension afterward.

I don't know if you can make a static zend extension.

Also, note that running the full test suite of xdebug requires to not activate opcache (configure --disable-opcache --with-xdebug=shared)