Laravel SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE not working for debugging web calls - php

Question

I have started to play with my first Laravel project on a MacOS. I am using Laravel Sail for running the project inside a container and everything seems to work except the debugging part.
Versions used:
Laravel 8.66,
PHP 8.0.12,
Xdebug 3.1.1
According to Laravel docs we can set SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE to enable the debug mode. However, the debugging is not working in PhpStorm even if it is set to listen for incoming connections. I have seen that running php -i in container returns different configs for Xdebug comparing to what we see in phpinfo() from browser even if the Configuration file is the same one.
Here are some screenshots from browser:
Here are screenshots from what I see in the command line:
As it can be seen in the attached screenshots, in console is used the XDEBUG_MODE env var, while in browser is used xdebug.mode. Is is possible to have the same configs in console and browser via SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE ?
This is the Dockerfile that is used:
FROM ubuntu:21.04
LABEL maintainer="Taylor Otwell"
ARG WWWGROUP
WORKDIR /var/www/html
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
ENV TZ=UTC
RUN ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone
RUN apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y gnupg gosu curl ca-certificates zip unzip git supervisor sqlite3 libcap2-bin libpng-dev python2 \
&& mkdir -p ~/.gnupg \
&& chmod 600 ~/.gnupg \
&& echo "disable-ipv6" >> ~/.gnupg/dirmngr.conf \
&& apt-key adv --homedir ~/.gnupg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys E5267A6C \
&& apt-key adv --homedir ~/.gnupg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys C300EE8C \
&& echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/php/ubuntu hirsute main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ppa_ondrej_php.list \
&& apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y php8.0-cli php8.0-dev \
php8.0-pgsql php8.0-sqlite3 php8.0-gd \
php8.0-curl php8.0-memcached \
php8.0-imap php8.0-mysql php8.0-mbstring \
php8.0-xml php8.0-zip php8.0-bcmath php8.0-soap \
php8.0-intl php8.0-readline php8.0-pcov \
php8.0-msgpack php8.0-igbinary php8.0-ldap \
php8.0-redis php8.0-swoole php8.0-xdebug \
&& php -r "readfile('http://getcomposer.org/installer');" | php -- --install-dir=/usr/bin/ --filename=composer \
&& curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | bash - \
&& apt-get install -y nodejs \
&& curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | apt-key add - \
&& echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list \
&& apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y yarn \
&& apt-get install -y mysql-client \
&& apt-get install -y postgresql-client \
&& apt-get -y autoremove \
&& apt-get clean \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/* /var/tmp/*
RUN setcap "cap_net_bind_service=+ep" /usr/bin/php8.0
RUN groupadd --force -g $WWWGROUP sail
RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash --no-user-group -g $WWWGROUP -u 1337 sail
COPY start-container /usr/local/bin/start-container
COPY supervisord.conf /etc/supervisor/conf.d/supervisord.conf
COPY php.ini /etc/php/8.0/cli/conf.d/99-sail.ini
RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/start-container
EXPOSE 8000
ENTRYPOINT ["start-container"]
And this is my docker-compose.yml:
# For more information: https://laravel.com/docs/sail
version: '3'
services:
laravel.test:
build:
context: ./vendor/laravel/sail/runtimes/8.0
dockerfile: Dockerfile
args:
WWWGROUP: '${WWWGROUP}'
image: sail-8.0/app
extra_hosts:
- 'host.docker.internal:host-gateway'
ports:
- '${APP_PORT:-80}:80'
environment:
WWWUSER: '${WWWUSER}'
LARAVEL_SAIL: 1
XDEBUG_MODE: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE:-off}'
XDEBUG_CONFIG: '${SAIL_XDEBUG_CONFIG:-client_host=host.docker.internal}'
PHP_IDE_CONFIG: "serverName=my.local"
volumes:
- '.:/var/www/html'
networks:
- sail
depends_on:
- mysql
mysql:
image: 'mysql:8.0'
ports:
- '${FORWARD_DB_PORT:-3306}:3306'
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: '${DB_PASSWORD}'
MYSQL_DATABASE: '${DB_DATABASE}'
MYSQL_USER: '${DB_USERNAME}'
MYSQL_PASSWORD: '${DB_PASSWORD}'
MYSQL_ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD: 'yes'
volumes:
- 'sailmysql:/var/lib/mysql'
networks:
- sail
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "mysqladmin", "ping", "-p${DB_PASSWORD}"]
retries: 3
timeout: 5s
networks:
sail:
driver: bridge
volumes:
sailmysql:
driver: local

Answer 1

As it can be seen in the attached screenshots, in console is used the XDEBUG_MODE env var, while in browser is used xdebug.mode.
Xdebug uses XDEBUG_MODE if it is set, otherwise it falls back to the value of the xdebug.mode setting.
I don't know which web server Sail uses, but some will strip out the environment variables — including XDEBUG_MODE.
So you can either fix that, or update the Dockerfile to add a line below:
COPY php.ini /etc/php/8.0/cli/conf.d/99-sail.ini
Which says:
COPY xdebug.ini /etc/php/8.0/cli/conf.d/999-xdebug.ini
And add to the contents of xdebug.ini (in the same directory as php.ini):
xdebug.mode=develop,debug

Answer 2

I had the same problem and I'm also on macOS.
You must use the export command, like this:
export SAIL_XDEBUG_MODE=develop,debug