There is nothing (much) magic about CGI scripts. Just run them as though from the command line. The IDE I'm using simulates a CGI environment which helps, but isn't essential.

cookies, SSL, filling out authentication and authorization forms before the main body of the script will run. hard to do via perl -d cgi-script.pl

There is no need to debug on the remote machine either of course. In fact it's probably safer to use an off line copy of databases and anything else required by the script when debugging and do the lot on your local machine.

it certainly would be a good idea. especially if everything were setup for that. in fact, the easier the whole setup is to port to various places, the cleaner the release control process is.