What debugging techniques are available for Laravel 6? - laravel

Question

I'm new to Laravel. I'm using Laravel 6 in VSCode and my first real app is not performing as desired. If I were writing Java or PHP, I would use a debugger to step-trace my way through the code to see what is happening where. What is the equivalent of that for VSCode and Laravel 6?
I've searched extensions and can't find any Laravel Debug extensions, at least not with those words in its name. I've searched YouTube for videos on debugging Laravel and came across one that talked about Laravel Debugbar, here. I installed it - or at least tried to - but something is not right; the Firefox developer tool says:
ReferenceError: PhpDebugBar is not defined
I don't see any channel for tech support at the Github page for this tool so I'm not sure what I've done wrong. How would I either fix the debugbar install or uninstall it altogether?
From what I can see in the video, this tool doesn't let me step-trace my way through the code anyway: it's more of a monitor that shows me information about the status of my code at various points. That, of course, could still be useful but it's not really what I want. Is there a true step-trace debugger for Laravel?
My laptop is a Windows 10 machine.
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EDIT
I'm trying to follow the advice I was given. I tried to self-update composer but it seemed to already be up to date. I tried to remove and reinstall debugbar but that doesn't seem to have worked very well. Here is the output from that attempt which was done in a VSCode terminal:
PS C:\Laravel\Somers01> composer remove barryvdh/laravel-debugbar --dev
barryvdh/laravel-debugbar could not be found in require but it is present in require-dev
Do you want to remove it from require-dev [yes]? y
–-dev is not required in your composer.json and has not been removed
Dependency "laravel/framework" is also a root requirement, but is not explicitly whitelisted. Ignoring.
Dependency "laravel/framework" is also a root requirement, but is not explicitly whitelisted. Ignoring.
Dependency "laravel/framework" is also a root requirement, but is not explicitly whitelisted. Ignoring.
Package "–-dev" listed for update is not installed. Ignoring.
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies (including require-dev)
Package operations: 0 installs, 0 updates, 2 removals
- Removing maximebf/debugbar (v1.16.1)
- Removing barryvdh/laravel-debugbar (v3.2.9)
Writing lock file
Generating optimized autoload files
> Illuminate\Foundation\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump
> #php artisan package:discover --ansi
In ProviderRepository.php line 208:
Class 'Barryvdh\Debugbar\ServiceProvider' not found
Script #php artisan package:discover --ansi handling the post-autoload-dump event returned with error code 1
PS C:\Laravel\Somers01> composer require barryvdh/laravel-debugbar --dev
[InvalidArgumentException]
Could not find package barryvdh/laravel-debugbar in a version matching –-dev
require [--dev] [--prefer-source] [--prefer-dist] [--no-progress] [--no-suggest] [--no-update] [--no-scripts] [--update-no-dev] [--update-with-dependencies] [--update-with-all-dependencies] [--ignore-platform-reqs] [--prefer-stable] [--prefer-lowest] [--sort-packages] [-o|--optimize-autoloader] [-a|--classmap-authoritative] [--apcu-autoloader] [--] [<packages>]...
Is debugbar fully removed now? If not, how do I remove the rest of it so that I can try the install again? I'm very new to Laravel, Composer, Artisan and the rest so I have no experience to draw on.

Answer 1

That error suggests a dependency is missing. Did you install it using composer, following the guide in the documentation? But about your quesiton: I THINK Xdebug might have something like that.
It's not a Laravel specific library but a php extension with some integration with IDEs.