This guide is a work-in-progress and does not yet cover the entire process
It is now possible to work on emergence sites locally without running a remote emergence-kernel server. Most importantly, this eliminates the need for using a WebDAV client and allows you to use arbitrary local git clients and editors as you would on any other project.
Two key projects enable this:
habitat
Habitat is a project by Chef that provides an effective and efficient way to completely uncouple applications and services from operating systems. The entire lifecycle of building, installing, running, configuring, and connecting applications and the services they depend on is automated under a consistent framework.
This means that instead of needing a remote Linux server to provide a consistent php+nginx+mysql stack, disposable micro-environments can be put together on-the-fly on your Linux, Mac, or Windows workstation.
hologit
Hologit is a project by Jarvus Innovations that provides in-repository automation for code and content. It handles combining your local work with remote software sources and executing any in-site build processes.
This replaces the need to use a virtual filesystem (VFS) to inherit from a parent project or use PHP-based configuration and management for library source repositories.
Preparing a project for local development
Coming soon, in the meantime see laddr as a model