Run WP-CLI with Xdebug using Herd Pro

I’ve been using Herd Pro for local development recently, and it works great. One really cool feature is the automatic Xdebug detection, which turns on Xdebug automatically if required (either through a detected breakpoint in PHPStorm or using a browser extension).

I often work with custom WP-CLI commands and sometimes want to enable Xdebug when running these commands. To do so, you can run the following command:

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herd debug $(which wp)

herd debug .. is a replacement for php .. but with Xdebug enabled, and $(which wp) points to the path of the WP-CLI executable.

If you want to run wp post list but with Xdebug enabled, you can run herd debug $(which wp) post list instead.

This gets tedious quickly, so I also recommend adding this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file:

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alias wpx='herd debug $(which wp)'

Now, you can use wp to run WP-CLI without Xdebug, and wpx to run WP-CLI with Xdebug enabled.