Xdebug Profiling

Although DDEV has more sophisticated profiling capabilities with xhprof and Blackfire, it also has built-in support for Xdebug profiling.

Basic usage

Create the directory .ddev/xdebug, which is where the output files will be dumped.

Switch Xdebug to profiling mode by adding this in .ddev/php/xdebug.ini:

xdebug.mode=profile
xdebug.start_with_request=yes
xdebug.output_dir=/var/www/html/.ddev/xdebug
xdebug.profiler_output_name=trace.%c%p%r%u.out

Enable Xdebug with ddev xdebug on.
Make an HTTP request to the DDEV project and the profile will be located in .ddev/xdebug directory.
Analyze it with any call graph viewer, for example kcachegrind.
When you’re done, execute ddev xdebug off to avoid generating unneeded profile files.
You can also toggle Xdebug on and off using ddev xdebug toggle.