Thursday, December 28. 2006

Getting XDebug working with PHPUnit for code coverage reports

I've been playing with PHPUnit a lot of late, particularly with framework development. One thing that's always hard to determine is how well your code is exercised -- basically, how much of the code is tested in the unit tests?

In PHPUnit 3, you can now generate code coverage reports using XDebug, and the usage is very simple: 

matthew@localhost:~/dev/zend/framework-svn/tests$ phpunit --report ~/tmp/report AllTests

The above command creates a coverage report directory 'report' under my tmp directory. You can then browse through the reports in a web browser and visually see which lines of code were executed during tests, and which were not, as well as a synopsis showing the percentage of coverage for any given file or directory -- useful stuff indeed!

So, what's the problem? Getting XDebug running.

The executive summary:

  • Enable the extension using zend_extension = /full/path/to/xdebug.so, not as extension = xdebug.so, in your php.ini
  • Use the setting xdebug.default_enable = Off in your php.ini.
  • If compiling using pecl or pear, make sure it compiles against the correct PHP; if not, hand compile it using: 
    $ /path/to/phpize
$ ./configure --with-php-config=/path/to/php-config
$ make
$ make install

For the detailed narrative, read on.

First off, I tried installing XDebug using pecl and pear. Even though my 'pear config-show' showed my correct PHP install and extension directory, for some reason it found the PHP 4.4.1 installation I have elsewhere in the filesystem, and it compiled against that. So, I followed the directions for compiling by hand, and all was mostly well. I discovered, however, that you need to specify the --with-php-config=/path/to/php-config switch to ensure that it uses the appropriate php-config (particularly if you have multiple PHP installs on your system).

Next up was getting it to work with PHP. I edited my php.ini file, and did a standard extension=xdebug.so. What was odd is that I then showed xdebug as present (using php -m), but not as a Zend extension. I tried zend_extension=xdebug.so, but then nothing showed. Then, in the end, I followed the instructions, and used zend_extension=/full/path/to/xdebug.so, and it was available.

Okay, let's test it out... I started running tests and... segmentation fault. Disabling the extension brought everything back to normal... only when enabled did the segmentation fault occur. I decided to look at the xdebug php.ini settings to see what I could find.

After some trial and error, I discovered that setting xdebug.default_enable = Off fixed the issue, and I was able to start generating some wonderful coverage reports.

Now, to write more tests...

Posted by Matthew Weier O'Phinney in PHP at 13:59 | Comments (10) | Trackback (1)

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Getting XDebug working with PHPUnit for code coverage reports
Getting XDebug working with PHPUnit for code coverage reports I've been playing with PHPUnit a lot of late, particularly with framework development. One thing that's always hard to determine is how well your code is exercised — basically, how muc...
Weblog: Nio's Weblog
Tracked: Dec 29, 09:18

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Where is my backtrace? :-) Xdebug should in no way segfault if you don't use .default_enable = Off...
#1 Derick (Link) on 2006-12-28 14:38 (Reply)
Hi Matthew -

I don't know if you use Zend Debugger (the server component of Zend Studio) but if you ever installed it, try to disable it - XDebug and Zend Debugger kind of collide with eachother and cause problems...
#2 Shahar (Link) on 2006-12-28 15:21 (Reply)
This clash is why I have a php-cli.ini now :-)

xdebug worked fine for me on Windows. Though I did update the ZF Testing Standards wiki page so that I could find my notes next time I reinstall!

Regards,

Rob...
#2.1 Rob... (Link) on 2006-12-29 15:00 (Reply)
Shahar -- I'm aware of the conflicts between XDebug and Zend Debugger. It would be nice if PHPUnit could support either one (or even APD) instead of requiring XDebug for this functionality.
#2.2 Matthew Weier O'Phinney (Link) on 2007-01-06 23:12 (Reply)
Fantastic - I had the same segmentation fault thanks!
#3 Chris Thomson on 2007-01-12 06:28 (Reply)
Wow! This will help me a ton ;-)
#4 Matt (Link) on 2007-02-02 22:51 (Reply)
Quick tip for everyone using Windows (for example, on development machines):

Use "zend_extension_ts" instead of "zend_extension"
#5 Matthew Ratzloff (Link) on 2007-03-26 20:47 (Reply)
Anyone know how to get the coverage to only report and a specified directory? it reports on my tests directory as well since it's run code and is causing very bad metrics on cruise control.

thanks in advance
#6 Marcus on 2008-01-04 16:56 (Reply)
I added the xdebug.default_enable = Off but I still get the segmentation fault. What are your full xdebug ini settings?
#7 luke (Link) on 2008-10-14 09:23 (Reply)
Honestly, that's it. I enable it in my CLI php.ini, and disable for my web server. :-/
#7.1 Matthew Weier O'Phinney (Link) on 2008-10-14 09:25 (Reply)

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