xdebug.mode = debug ​

The "debug" mode allows us to really debug our application and go step by step through it. We can set breakpoints or stop in the code line that causes an exception. This prevents us on using the good old var_dump() and guessing where our program goes wrong as we can see the content of variables, why a condition might fail and so on.

In the section "Usage" you will find some examples on how to use the step-by-step debugging with different IDE´s or Tools.