I tend to like queuing my files, skipping .svn folders and setting up other filters when publishing my project to a server.
Lately I've been using FileZilla after going through licenses for CuteFTP and CoreFTP , both of which have been very unpredictable...

I'm also contemplating using the built-in rsync in symfony - it'd be awesome if PHPed had some better publishing tools....
anyone?

It looks like you have something to suggest but it's very unclear what.