[xdebug-general] Re: arrays in local context limited to 31 elems?

Derick,

I just received the email notice on the issue resolution
(http://bugs.xdebug.org/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000327) and wanted to
give you some additional thoughts from the user perspective.

Your note in the resolution of the issue was "The defaults need to be
different as it is a bad idea to have a depth != 1 for remote debugging,
while it also cumbersome to deal with var_dump() displays if the depth =
1 there."

I'd agree with the intent of your comment, but shouldn't the decision on
the merits or detriments of returning mounds of data in a remote setting
be left to the user vs. having the decision made for you prior to use
implemented with what appear to be static random values? Personally I
spent more than a few hours trying to figure out why my array depths
were so shallow, the combination of my newness to the app coupled with
the lack of doc on this sent me on a good goose chase for the better
part of a day before I dug in and figured it out.

I'd make the case that in some situations returning a gob of data to
help debug the app is a good thing and required to chase down an issue
when debugging. Informing the user that: 1) in remote usage these
features are assigned different values (you've done this, but see
below), and 2) the value in a remote debugging situation is set to N,
and 3) there is a workaround by providing an example for how to expand
the results in the documentation are good things.

Your updated doc shows: "This setting does not have any influence on the
number of children that is send to the client through the Remote
Debugging feature." This seems somewhat misleading to me - it implies
that in a remote setting there is no way to change max_children. You
are correct in that the php.ini setting for
xdebug.var_display_max_children is ignored in remote, however you can
instruct xdebug via the feature_set command when interacting with the
debugger during a debug session to change the value and it will indeed
return a boatload of data when the setting is increased in remote
settings to the point of overwhelming the client app.

I offer a different doc snippet for you to consider:

xdebug.var_display_max_children
Type: integer, Default value: 128*
Controls the amount of array children and object's properties are shown
when variables are displayed with either xdebug_var_dump(),
xdebug.show_local_vars or through Function Traces.
* Remote Debugging Usage: This setting is overridden to 32 in order to
decease the amount of information being returned. To modify the value
use 'feature_set -i <trans_id> -n max_children -v <value>'. Note: Use
caution with increasing this value via feature_set as the amount of data
returned might be significant and cause unexpected results.

It would be great if the info was on the remote debugging doc page as
well since this info is specific to remote debugging, someone focused on
remote might miss the info if it is not on the remote page as well.

Thanks for taking all this into consideration, I'm enjoying the program
and my increased productivity when it's in use.

Mike
Received on Sat Oct 27 2007 - 19:15:14 BST