Development can sometimes feel like a game of Whackamole. You find one thing that doesn’t work, fix it, and then move on — only to find that the next thing also doesn’t work.
Today, I’ve spent a good part of my day trying to finally get my development environment up and running. I’m using PhpStorm and I started using Desktop Server, but I couldn’t establish a development environment connection to Desktop Server. The folks at ServerPress finally responded after a week (and a phone call), but they told me they would have to update their tutorial. Needless to say, that wasn’t going to get XDebug to talk to PhpStorm.
Since PhpStorm had MAMP tutorials, I decided to download a 14-day trial of MAMP Pro. So far, so good — except. I once again ran into the problem where XDebug only allows 100 nesting levels. No problem. I whacked that mole last week. Just go into PHP.ini and change the setting — except…
As it turns out, MAMP makes it rather difficult to change PHP.ini. You’d think you’d just find the version of PHP you’re running (MAMP allows different versions). But no. In fact, what you have to do is go to the MAMP Pro File Menu, select Edit Template, select PHP, and then the version of PHP you’re using. Once you do that, a file editor opens up with the PHP.ini file that needs editing (along with a very big warning that editing PHP.ini could end the world).
Bottom line: once that version of the PHP.ini file was edited, and the server restarted, the problem went away. For now. One more more, whacked.
Update: I went back to Desktop Server. They wrote a great tutorial that got PhpStorm working nicely, and since I both like Desktop Server and bought the premium version, I’ll stay with it as long as it does the job.
