Simple instructions to update XDebug on Homestead.
To update XDebug to 2.3.2 (tested) on a Homestead 0.2.5 (tested) Vagrant box, you can use the following commands:
cd ~ wget http://xdebug.org/files/xdebug-2.3.2.tgz tar -xvzf xdebug-2.3.2.tgz cd xdebug-2.3.2 phpize ./configure make cp modules/xdebug.so /usr/lib/php5/20131226 sudo cp modules/xdebug.so /usr/lib/php5/20131226 sudo nano /etc/php5/cli/php.ini cd /etc/php5/fpm/conf.d/ sudo nano 20-xdebug.ini sudo service php5-fpm restart
Probably this will also work with different versions of XDebug and/or Homestead. Just replace the version number of XDebug to the one you want to use.