I do the same, but I skip rsync for git.

    git clone $uri dotfiles; export HOME=$(pwd)/dotfiles 

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.