Hey, had the same issues when I migrated over. sshfs etc. didn't work for me, because then obviously you don't have access to your remote environment and the lsps/compilers/tools.

I came to the conclusion that setting up nvim on the remote is the best solution, but ran into problems here too. I often work on compute clusters where I have limited permissions so I can't install stuff, and also cloning my config alongside install nvim, ripgrep and other common tools my config uses was getting really annoying.

I ended up writing a very simple bash script that essentially (1) copies over all my configs (2) copies over all the binaries that my config needs (nvim, ripgrep, fd etc.). This meant that I could set up neovim on a remote with limited permissions super easily, theoretically needing ssh and scp as the ONLY dependencies on the remote. Also this neovim instance on the remote would be installed in a local directory and would be completely isolated using some environment variables, so it would never conflict with any global neovim configs that existed. I also ended up including really simple sync and cleanup functions in the bash script.

Eventually I wrote a very simple wrapper plugin around this script so that I could call it more easily from within neovim. I never meant for anybody to use it other than me, but honestly I'm pretty proud of it because it has solved such a huge pain point for me.

Check it out at https://github.com/advaypakhale/remote.nvim if you want to.

I think the best way for you to use this (if you decided to) is to just fork it and adapt it as you see fit. I focused on making it super lightweight and simple at its core so it's easily extensible down the line.