PHP, Docker, Xdebug and the missing local variables

I've made a switch in the last 12 months to use Docker as my local development environment for my PHP applications. One of the greatest modules for PHP IMHO, is Xdebug. Many moons ago, I used to frantically hack in 'var_dump(...); exit;' calls to see what a particular variable, object, array, etc contained. This is "OK" and it will do just that, but having a step debugger like Xdebug shows you a much wider picture and enables you to trace into other parts of the code with ease. The other massive advantage, is there's zero chance of missing a var_dump() and commiting it to your repo for deployment!

I'm not sure if this is a PHP7.2 thing (I suspect it is?)... but when putting breakpoints into the code (I use PhpStorm as my preferred IDE), I would see everything, except local variables. I'd see all of the globals, params injected into methods, but no locally initialised variables. This is when running as a 'PHP Web Page' configuration in PhpStorm. When writing tests (we are writing tests, right? =P ) I could put breakpoints in either the code or the test itself and all variables would be visible. I've been banging my head against my desk for a few days with regards to this issue. I've scoured the 'net, read multiple posts on StackOverview and the likes of others encountering the same problem, but also with other IDEs too (such as VSCode). I'd tried just about every xdebug.* PHP setting under the sun to rectify this to no avail.

I did some more digging about this evening and one of the things I tried, was enabling/disabling PHP modules. It didn't take long to discover the culprit doing this... PHP's OpCache module!

I'm guessing that as part of it's internal optimisation, that it does $something with the variables making them not visible within the Xdebug stack. By removing the symlink to the opcache.ini module loader, things are all working as expected.

Hopefully this will help others experiencing the same issue that I've been having in regards to local vars not displaying.