Why does PHPUnit hide my xdebug backtrace?

Question

I have PHPUnit and xdebug installed, and in my php.ini files for CLI I've got:

display_errors = On
xdebug.default_enable = 1

I've verified that an xdebug backtrace is printed when I create an error using the interactive console, but when an error occurs while running phpunit, there is no backtrace?

What is happening to the backtrace? Is phpunit hiding it from me? Is there some setting I'm missing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

What is happening to the backtrace? Is phpunit hiding it from me?

Yes, PHPUnit disables xdebug, at least these traces (by calling xdebug_disable()^Docs).

Is there some setting I'm missing?

You can add a bootstrap file in which you enable it again with xdebug_enable()^Docs. This does work but will show you stack traces on any exception thrown as well (caught or uncaught).

See as well: Issue #221 PHPUnit disables xdebug, there is another ini setting suggested:

sebastianbergmann: The problem is the xdebug.show_exception_trace configuration setting. When set to 1, this will "show a stack trace whenever an exception is raised - even if this exception is actually caught.". This behaviour breaks the output of PHPUnit.

Now if I remember correctly, Derick recommended using xdebug_disable(); over ini_set('xdebug.show_exception_trace', 0);.

Answer 2

It's because unit tests with phpunit are run from the console, which is a CLI application. You should be able to run it with:

php -dhtml_errors=1 `which phpunit` yourteststuff.