I started doing exactly that.

I've been reluctant to contribute to nodejs (e.g. electron) projects for some time, because I just don't want to run npm on a computer with any kind of remotely private data.

Lately there were just too many itches to scratch, so I went for a VM replicating my normal setup (dotfiles etc.), and I just use x2go, locally. Quick and dirty setup which is good enough when used infrequently.

My ideal setup would probably be closer to https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/docker-containers-on-the-desk..., but it's more setup than I could be bothered with at the time. Maybe one day.