Debugging IDE's port connection to XDebug: “Waiting to Connect”

Question

Preamble

Like many, I\'ve spent more hours debugging my IDE’s connection to XDebug than I have using XDebug to debug my programs. I’ve gotten it to work repeat

Answer 1

Well, my development-set up somewhat differs from yours but I very well know this problem. In fact I just solved it ... this time my Fireeall blocked the port XDebug uses to talk to my IDE.

Some things come to my mind when reading your account:

1) "I can't explain what causes the problem or when the problem manifests." This is a very important statement b/c, as we all know, technichal solutions are strictly dependant on wheather the underlying problem occurs always or sometimes, in a seemingly random fashion. So ... can you sometimes perform XDebugging this way or never?

2) When your IDE is waiting and your browser renders the site immediately, then I guess there is something wrong with your IDE telling your XDebug-server to start. B/c if XDebug would start and couldn't connect back to your XDebug-client then the web-site wouldn't render immediately. But in your case the GET-parameters are just ignored b/c they have no meaning for your Apache/PHP-server as they don't know anything about some XDebug-session you would like to start.

3) Your solution approaches seem very complicated to me. I would keep at simple as possible first and see how that works. For example "xdebug.idekey="netbeans-xdebug" is usually not necassary for a first setup.

Those are my two cents

Best Raffael