So far I installed xampp and the zend debugger so the phpinfo show:

Expose Zend Debugger    always
Passive Mode Timeout    20 seconds

Directive       Local Value     Master Value
zend_debugger.allow_hosts       127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1
zend_debugger.allow_tunnel      no value        no value
zend_debugger.connect_password  no value        no value
zend_debugger.connector_port    10013   10013
zend_debugger.deny_hosts        no value        no value
zend_debugger.httpd_uid -1      -1
zend_debugger.max_msg_size      2097152 2097152

To develop and debug I use eclipse pdt all in one.

next I was able to debug a single page php application(not cake
related) , but I put a breakpoint in one of the cake controllers it
never stops there.

What I'm asking is does anyone uses the eclipse PTD to develop in
cake?
If so how do I debug it?
thanks...

I tried Zend, but couldn't get it to work properly on my server. I ended
up using Xdebug ( http://xdebug.org ) and the experimental Xdebug
integration plugin for PDT (
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=169408 ). There are a
couple excellent guides to getting it running:

http://www.starbowconsulting.com/blog/tao/setting-eclipse-pdt-and-xdebug

http://www.inkompetent.se/wiki/php/remote_debugging_with_pdt_and_xdebug