What I mean is an .rsync-filter with ‘H Cache/‘ or some lines of patterns to exclude. You’ll need to run with -F every time. On the sending side, a recent tar will accept —-exclude-caches if you can be diligent about creating CACHEDIR.TAG.
For sure, you need to exclude whatever "dotfiles" you don't want copied (or explicitly copy the ones you want), particularly caches and other giant hidden things.
It's surprising to me how many projects can be replaced with just a line or two of shell script. This project is a slightly more sophisticated shell script that exposes a friendlier UI, but I don't see why it's needed when the alternative is much simpler, considering the target audience.
These days, my laptop acts as a dumb SSH gateway for Linux VMs. No configuration or setup, aside from VS code connecting to VMs. Any server that I would want to load my dotfiles onto will almost always have git installed.
Rant (not directed at any comment here): If it's a production server without git, then please do not run scripts like this. Do not create junk directories on (or ideally any modifications to) secure machines. It inevitably causes new and uninteresting puzzles for your colleagues. Create documented workflows for incident responses or inspection.
