debugging remote PHP code in eclipse

Hi everybody, I have big trouble to correctly configure Eclipse/Xdebug to remotely debug a PHP website. When web server is local i have no problem, it works like a charm...but in case webserver is not local, that's a real nightmare. till now everything what i found on internet was about settings for a local debugging. few are about remote debugging... and after reading them i still have trouble.... it's like something is missing...an important step... so i would like to know if someone could help me. If you already successfully setup eclipse/xdebug for a remote debugging, please let me know. i feel like a local copy of website root folder must exist on my client computer but is it true ? how to configure eclipse to be sure it will run code with PHP server ? so please, contact me if you already did it. thx a lot