As part of the 8.0 pre-release announcement, the OpenSSH project stated that they consider the scp protocol outdated, inflexible, and not readily fixed. They then go on to recommend the use of sftp or rsync for file transfer instead. Many users grew up on the scp command, however, and so are not familiar with rsync. Additionally, rsync can do much more than just copy files, which can give a beginner the impression that it’s complicated and opaque. Especially when broadly the scp flags map directly to the cp flags while the rsync flags do not. This article will provide an introduction and transition guide for anyone familiar with scp. Let’s jump into the most common scenarios: Copying Files and Copying Directories. Copying files For copying a single file, the scp and rsync commands are effectively equivalent. Let’s say you need to ship foo.

So anyone who knows me will know that I love tools that are configured with dotfiles. Generally I find these tools are more powerful and faster than their (generally) graphical counterparts. I love dotfiles so much that I even wrote a tool to help me manage them: DFM. With all that said I’ve spent many years and hours tweaking my dotfiles and after sharing them with my good friend Chas Busenburg he remarked at how much useful stuff was in my bashrc. I had never really thought about it, I see it as piles of hacks and duct tape, but it does have quite a few useful functions and tricks probably unknown to many Bash users / enthusiasts. So it is on that note that I welcome you to the guided tour of my bashrc. If you’re looking for the full version for reference you can find it with the rest of my dotfiles here.