Fixing Segmentation Fault Error on CircleCI
Try disabling xdebug if you get a segmentation fault error when running php unit tests on CircleCI. Xdebug is installed automatically on some docker images and can cause segfaults during the build process.
Oh the cryptic "segmentation fault" error message! No more details, no more hints where to start debugging. Just the two words.
A "segmentation fault" is an error that occurs deeper than your typical application code. Sometimes you can create one via programming error but normally it's something else.
In the application stack I work with we tend to see these errors when running our test suites. Most recently I saw it on a continuous integration build with CircleCI.
Fortunately, the fix is simple: disable xdebug!
The docker images that CircleCI uses have xdebug preinstalled which may be helpful for some, but I am not using it for testing so I just disable it using this command step.
Disabling xdebug during the build process
Hopefully this helps if you run into your own segmentation fault errors with CircleCI.
Send me a tweet @jesseschutt if so. I'd love to hear from you!