Don't be afraid to alter vendor code while debugging

I'm a huge proponent of step debugging, but I do appreciate the value of a quick dd statement to figure out what's going on in a piece of code.

But what if the code you're trying to understand is in the framework or in a package? In other words, what if the code is in the vendor directory?

Generally speaking, you don't want to modify code in that directory. It's managed by Composer, and not part of your git repo. So any changes you make locally won't apply in production.

But for temporary debugging, I argue there's no harm in making a quick modification like dropping a dd even in some vendor code.

It's a valid approach if you need to quickly figure something out and don't want to set up step debugging.

However, and this is the important part, make sure to clean up after yourself. If you're using dd, it will be obvious when you forget to remove it, but other modifications may be more subtle.

If I modified more than one file, sometimes the safest thing to do is just delete the whole vendor directory and run composer install again. That way you're absolutely sure none of your modifications are left behind accidentally.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. If you ever find yourself stuck on an issue, don't burn a whole day trying to figure it out alone. That's what our Get Unstuck service is designed for!