Development in Visual Studio 2010 for remote Sharepoint 2010 server

Question

I understand that you can't develop in Visual Studio 2010 for a remote Sharepoint 2010 server because you need a local copy running on your box. (I know there is a hack)

In my situation I have Sharepoint Foundation installed locally for development purposes but I'm not sure how to get the custom lists, etc from the remote server to my local box so I can develop against the same objects.

I've tried exporting the site on the remote box and then creating a new Visual Studio 2010 project from it. This resulted in exceptions when deploying to my local box - more problems which I'm sure given time I could work out...but more problems. (It was types not being installed properly on my local box that the custom object was using) So I've been thinking there must be an easier way to pull down data structures.

I've spent a while looking for this and while there is quite a lot of information out there I'm finding it hard to find basic information like this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

What objects do you need from the remote server?
If it is lists, you can export the lists from the remote server as templates then use the resulting stp files to create the lists locally. If it is dlls you can get them form GAC and add the required entries in SharePoint site web.config. You can also try to export the entire site and create a site locally based on the site template.