Isso ajuda? Opção -d e -m do man-page:
-d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
-m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
e execute ...
mkdir dirA
mkdir dirB
mkdir dirA/dirAA
touch dirA/fileA
touch dirA/dirAA/fileAA
rsync --stats -dm dirA/ dirB/
Saída:
Number of files: 3 (reg: 1, dir: 2)
Number of created files: 1 (reg: 1)
Number of deleted files: 0
Number of regular files transferred: 1
Total file size: 0 bytes
Total transferred file size: 0 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 0
File list generation time: 0.001 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 123
Total bytes received: 31
Resultado:
ls dirB
fileA