Some of the benefits I’ve enjoyed using rsync instead of git to bring back my source code changes to the repository are:

• Proper symlink handling
• No state maintenance required
• One line command line
• Shows the files that changed

A typical presync command would look like:

rsync -av --delete --exclude '.idea' remoteuser@remoteip:projects/prj/ projects/prj/ --dry-run

After I am comfortable with the changes, I run it again without –dry-run.