Hi,
I love uPython for ESP8266. But debugging with repl is not always very efficient.
I was so desperate, that I wrote some libs, which emulate some functions like pins, uart, adc so I can develop on Linux with Pycharm.
Project is here: https://github.com/rundekugel/micropythonemu
So I get a little GUI, where I can see pin status and manipulate pins and adc value.
UART support works, too. Sockets work 90% so far.
I also thought about to connect the ESP8266 through a layer, so I can debug on it.
But: isn't there something out there, which is doing all this already? I didn't found it.