Currently, xdebug handles all error levels that are reporting in PHP (error_reporting). This is less than optimal, because stack traces are not only unnecessary for user notices and other informational errors, but also highly intrusive. Producing an 8-line stack trace for every notice causes huge problems when user notices are utilized to provide debugging information.

In my case, I have written a library which uses user notices to provide state information in the processing of the file format it handles, when "verbosity" is enabled. This is done so as not to interfere with the output buffer, which could interfere with the function of the user's script.

Because my library produces upwards of several dozen such notices, and xdebug produces 7 of its own lines (stack trace) for each notice, this means that the debugging output is 8x the intended size, and difficult if not impossible to read through.