The PHP runtime engine behind DDLess — a visual step-through debugger for PHP.
This repo contains the engine only. The desktop app, UI, and AI Copilot are available at ddless.com.
ddless-engine parses PHP source via AST (nikic/PHP-Parser), injects ddless_step_check() calls before each executable line using a custom stream wrapper, and communicates with the desktop app through file-based IPC. Your original files are never modified on disk.
Supports breakpoints (conditional, logpoints, dumppoints), step-in/over/out, watch expressions, variable inspection, and trace mode.
CakePHP · CodeIgniter 4 · Drupal · Laravel · Vanilla PHP · Symfony · Tempest · WordPress · Yii2
src/
├── debug.php Core engine (AST analysis, instrumentation, breakpoint handler)
├── http_trigger.php Entry point for HTTP debug sessions
├── method_trigger.php Entry point for method-level debugging
├── cli_trigger.php Entry point for CLI script debugging
├── task_trigger.php Entry point for task/command debugging
├── ssh_proxy_router.php SSH remote debugging support
├── frameworks/ Framework-specific request handling and bootstrapping
│ ├── cakephp/
│ ├── codeigniter/
│ ├── drupal/
│ ├── laravel/
│ ├── php/
│ ├── symfony/
│ ├── tempest/
│ ├── wordpress/
│ └── yii/
├── sessions/ File-based IPC (runtime ↔ desktop app)
├── cache/ Pre-instrumented code cache
└── vendor-internal/ Bundled PHP-Parser (no Composer required)
- PHP 7.4+ (tested up to 8.5)
jsonextension (ships with PHP by default)- No external dependencies
php tests/run-all.phpOr run individually:
php tests/NormalizeValueTest.php
php tests/InstrumentCodeAstTest.php
php tests/HttpRequestTest.phpCI runs against PHP 7.4+ on every push and PR.
Source-available. See LICENSE.