Sometime after I started using PHP 7.3 I noticed running my tests locally took much longer than before. Instead of a few seconds, the tests now took a few minutes, which is less than optimal when you try to develop in a TDD manner. I don't know how I came to think about disabling xdebug but I did. The test running time decreased to a few seconds again and for me it wasn't a pain in the ass to develop in TDD anymore :).

Disable xdebug temporarily

If you only want to disable xdebug temporarily I highly recommend adding the following two aliases to your ~/.aliases, ~/.bash_aliases or whatever other files you typically store your aliases in.

alias enxdebug="sudo phpenmod -s cli xdebug"
alias disxdebug="sudo phpdismod -s cli xdebug"

Disable xdebug completely

Place the following in your php.ini or a better place might be your php/{version}/mods-available/xdebug.ini.

xdebug.remote_autostart=0  
xdebug.remote_enable=0
xdebug.profiler_enable=0

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