Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to get xcodebuild to run the homebrew version of rsync. My validation was manually performing the same rsync commands that I observed xcodebuild running and confirming that the ._Symbols folder was not created.

Following up on my previous post, I confirmed that if I install the latest version of rsync via brew, and re-run the rsync command from my previous post, a ._Symbols folder is not created. Unfortunately, xcodebuild appears to be hard-coded to using /usr/bin/rsync rather than the version that I installed via brew, and replacing the version at that path requires disabling some core system file protections.

I've been digging into this, as it's affecting Unreal Engine builds as well, and I've tracked it down to an rsync call being made to copy symbol files into the Root folder of what will become the .ipa later. 2025-04-03 21:42:52 +0000 [MT] Running /usr/bin/rsync '-8aPhhE' '/var/folders/49/_n6lvt951xxdxhf016j1pslr0000gs/T/XcodeDistPipeline.~~~si0ws0/Symbols' '--link-dest' '/var/folders/49/_n6lvt951xxdxhf016j1pslr0000gs/T/XcodeDistPipeline.~~~si0ws0' '/var/folders/49/_n6lvt951xxdxhf016j1pslr0000gs/T/XcodeDistPipeline.~~~si0ws0/Root' 2025-04-03 21:42:52 +0000 ._Symbols/ Symbols/ Symbols/1A2A0969-1932-3CE7-8ACF-232496AA2577.symbols Symbols/._1A2A0969-1932-3CE7-8ACF-232496AA2577.symbols Running this command manually, if I remove the '-E' portion of the arguments, the '._Symbols' folder is no longer created. This doesn't make much sense to me, as -E is related to perserving executability. -E, --executability Preserve the executability of regular files (i.e., a file is "executable" if at least one 'x' mode bit is enabled in its permissions). If the source file is executable, then for each 'r' mode bit enabled in the destination file's permissions, the corresponding 'x' mode bit will be enabled. If the source file is not executable then all ugo 'x' mode bits of the destination file will be disabled. This option has no effect if --perms is also specified. My suspicion is that MacOS 15.4 shipped either shipped with a new version of rsync that is misbehaving, or something the the OS changes such that rsync is providnig a different result.