Oh, the agony.
I spent the better part of a day trying to get Xdebug working on my MAMP site on my Mac. I read here, here and here… all you have to do is to “edit your php.ini file” and bada-boom! you are off to the races.
No, no and no. The problem was that it kinda works, then it doesn’t, then nothing does, then things work but xdebug doesn’t.
Over the years, I have realized that when things start to get real hard, I’m doing something wrong, terribly wrong. Some where in some place, I’ve made the simplest of errors, creating a cacophony of bugs so bad, I’ve got to look down to see up.
I use MAMP, I also use MAMP PRO. Some scorn, I don’t because it seems to save me time. It would have this time, if I had RTFM’d. No, I didn’t. Instead I read what everybody else said “edit your php.ini file by hand”. WRONG!
Instead, use MAMP PRO’s  File-Edit Template command. It was RIGHT THERE!!
Thank you, Drupal. You saved my sanity. As for the rest, the rest of your information was pretty good, all except for…