Generate Code Coverage with native PHP Debugger (no Xdebug required)

phpdbg is the native PHP debugger and can generate code coverage without Xdebug. This is handy for CI and often faster to boot than enabling Xdebug.

Basic usage

phpdbg -qrr ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-html build/coverage

• -qrr runs phpunit through phpdbg in quiet mode
• The coverage report will be written to build/coverage/index.html

Coverage formats

# HTML report
phpdbg -qrr ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-html build/coverage

# Clover XML for CI (GitLab/GitHub integrations)
phpdbg -qrr ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-clover build/coverage.xml

With DDEV/Docker

ddev exec phpdbg -qrr ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-clover build/coverage.xml

Add a Composer script:

{
  "scripts": {
    "test:coverage": "phpdbg -qrr ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-html build/coverage"
  }
}

PhpStorm integration

In PhpStorm, you can still run PHPUnit with coverage by selecting the CLI interpreter that supports phpdbg (or configure the DDEV/Docker remote interpreter) and checking “Coverage”.

Notes

• No need to enable Xdebug just for coverage
• Great for CI environments
• For profiling or step debugging, use Xdebug