SCP using SSH config

here's what I do when a host ony allows pushing stuff, and no rsync:

• create a "shadow" directory on your local machine to resemble the target structure
• use rsync to push to this shadow directory, and capture the output (there's --log-file if you want to script it)
• from the rsync output, determine the files you need to delete, or push and make a list
• maybe (depends on the way you push): create a package from the files that need to be changed only
• start your push tool - ftp, scp, whatever - and let it run on the files from the list

This has already been answered best here.

To summarize: put the following in ~/.ssh/config

Host target.machine
User          targetuser
HostName      target.machine
ProxyCommand  ssh proxyuser@proxy.machine nc %h %p 2> /dev/null

and then simply scp to target.machine any time you want to proxy via proxy.machine!

Also works for ssh, so will save you time ssh-ing to the target machine too.

Credit should go to user24925 who answered this in 2011.