Could this be merged in? I could really use this as well.

yeah, please merge 😄

Another vote for merge please, this feature is essential

#38 Ops, I just found this PR. I issued another one for the same feature.

@MacHu-GWU I made this back on 2018, the project is clearly and sadly inactive :(

@ferares Is the author still active on GitHub? It is always good to have group of people maintaining open source project.

@ferares Is the author still active on GitHub? It is always good to have group of people maintaining open source project.

Yeah he is @bitprophet

If someone is interested, here a working snippet for rsync over Fabric's method local

Simply add this to your own inherited from Connection class

    def rsync(self, source, target, exclude=(),  rsync_opts="", ssh_opts="",
              delete=False, strict_host_keys=True, upload=True):
        if isinstance(exclude, string_types):
            exclude = [exclude]
        # Double-backslash-escape
        replace_bs = lambda s: str(s).replace('"', '\\\\"')
        exclusions = " ".join((f'--exclude "{replace_bs(s)}"' for s in exclude))
        # Honor SSH key(s)
        keys = self.connect_kwargs.get("key_filename", [])
        if isinstance(keys, string_types):
            keys = [keys]
        key_string = "-i " + " -i ".join(keys) if keys else ""
        port_string = f"-p {self.port}"

        # Workaround for our old keys:
        ssh_opts += '-o "PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-dss"'
        # Strict host key checking
        disable_keys = "-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no"
        if not strict_host_keys and disable_keys not in ssh_opts:
            ssh_opts += " {}".format(disable_keys)
        # Remote shell (SSH) options
        rsh_parts = [key_string, port_string, ssh_opts]
        rsh_string = "--rsh='ssh {}'".format(" ".join(rsh_parts)) if any(rsh_parts) else ""
        # Set up options part of string
        options = f'{"--delete" if delete else ""}{exclusions} -pthrvz {rsync_opts} {rsh_string}'
        remote_prefix = f"{self.user}@{self.host}"
        if self.host.count(":") > 1:
            remote_prefix = f"[{remote_prefix}]"

        upload_direction = f"{source} {remote_prefix}:{target}" if upload else f"{remote_prefix}:{source} {target}"
        print(f'rsync {options} {upload_direction}')
        return self.local(f"rsync {options} {upload_direction}")

If someone is interested, here a working snippet for rsync over Fabric's method local

Simply add this to your own inherited from Connection class

    def rsync(self, source, target, exclude=(),  rsync_opts="", ssh_opts="",
              delete=False, strict_host_keys=True, upload=True):
        if isinstance(exclude, string_types):
            exclude = [exclude]
        # Double-backslash-escape
        replace_bs = lambda s: str(s).replace('"', '\\\\"')
        exclusions = " ".join((f'--exclude "{replace_bs(s)}"' for s in exclude))
        # Honor SSH key(s)
        keys = self.connect_kwargs.get("key_filename", [])
        if isinstance(keys, string_types):
            keys = [keys]
        key_string = "-i " + " -i ".join(keys) if keys else ""
        port_string = f"-p {self.port}"

        # Workaround for our old keys:
        ssh_opts += '-o "PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-dss"'
        # Strict host key checking
        disable_keys = "-o StrictHostKeyChecking=no"
        if not strict_host_keys and disable_keys not in ssh_opts:
            ssh_opts += " {}".format(disable_keys)
        # Remote shell (SSH) options
        rsh_parts = [key_string, port_string, ssh_opts]
        rsh_string = "--rsh='ssh {}'".format(" ".join(rsh_parts)) if any(rsh_parts) else ""
        # Set up options part of string
        options = f'{"--delete" if delete else ""}{exclusions} -pthrvz {rsync_opts} {rsh_string}'
        remote_prefix = f"{self.user}@{self.host}"
        if self.host.count(":") > 1:
            remote_prefix = f"[{remote_prefix}]"

        upload_direction = f"{source} {remote_prefix}:{target}" if upload else f"{remote_prefix}:{source} {target}"
        print(f'rsync {options} {upload_direction}')
        return self.local(f"rsync {options} {upload_direction}")

This was helpful, thank you.