R – Test SharePoint Sites

Although I don't recommend it, it is possible to copy the SharePoint DLLs to your local XP/Vista machine and develop and compile in Visual Studio, then deploy to a Windows Server, after which you could remote debug. Really though you are better off just doing everything on Windows Server. You can run Virtual PC on XP or Vista and install a Windows 2003 stack then do all of your development that way. I have a 5 year old XP box at home that I run Windows Server 2003 on Virtual PC and it works out just fine for SharePoint development including debugging. One thing I had to do though was install a second hard drive and dedicate that to the virtual machine image. Prior to that it was unbearably slow. The second hard drive cost just $27 (30 GB), but obviously you can spend more if you want.