rsync_cmd: edit locally, build remotely

rsync_cmd is designed to make it easy to develop a project locally, but build and run it remotely. It uses rsync to mirror (i.e. alter the remote copy to be identical to the local copy, removing any remote changes) the current working directory to a remote and ssh to run a command remotely in that directory.

Its usage is as follows:

rsync_cmd [-d|--dry-run] [--ignore-conf-file] [-v] \
  [-- <rsync_opt_1> .. <rsync_opt_n> --] \
  <remote host> [<arg_1> ... <arg_n>]

For example:

$ cd ~/src/yk/
$ rsync_cmd ssh.example.com cargo test

This will take the contents of the current working directory -- ~/src/yk/ -- and replicate them to the directory ~/yk on the host ssh.example.com using rsync -az --delete-during. If/when synchronisation completes successfully, rsync_cmd will then run ssh ssh.example.com "cd yk && cargo test". Note that by default rsync_cmd will only synchronise directories that have a (possibly blank) .rsync_cmd file in, to help you avoid accidentally synchronising unintended directories.

To see which commands are executed, specify -v. For a dry-run that doesn't run rsync or ssh, specify -d.

To pass additional arguments to rsync, put them between a pair of -- arguments.

rsync_cmd adds dir-merge,-n /.gitignore to the rsync command which does require trusting the sender, though in rsync_cmd's mirroring mode, it is unclear whether one does need to trust the sender. rsync_cmd also adds --exclude-from=$HOME/.config/git/gitignore_global to the rsync command if a file exists at that path.

.rsync_cmd configuration file

The .rsync_cmd file by default denotes directories which rsync_cmd is allow to synchronise. It can also contain normal rsync_cmd command-line options that are prepended to the user's actual command-line arguments. Each command-line argument in .rsync_cmd must be on a single line. For example:

$ cat .rsync_cmd
cat: .rsync_cmd: No such file or directory
$ rsync -v ssh.example.com cargo test
rsync -az --partial --info progress2 --delete-during --filter ":- .gitignore" --exclude-from /home/ltratt/.config/git/gitignore_global . ssh.example.com:yk
ssh -t ssh.example.com cd yk && cargo test
$ echo --\n--exclude=.git\n-- > .rsync_cmd
$ cat .rsync_cmd
--
--exclude=".git"
--
$ rsync -v ssh.example.com cargo test
rsync -az --partial --info progress2 --delete-during --filter ":- .gitignore" --exclude-from /home/ltratt/.config/git/gitignore_global --exclude=.git . ssh.example.com:yk
ssh -t ssh.example.com cd yk && cargo test

If you wish to temporarily stop the contents of .rsync_cmd being prepended to the rsync command, specify --ignore-conf-file or -i to rsync_cmd. To stop rsync_cmd checking for the presence of .rsync_cmd, specify --ignore-conf-file or -i twice.