Install rsync in the QEMU base image?

Copying the git repository using scp $PWD "vm:" will not preserve permissions. Using rsync -av would fix that problem but rsync is not installed on the image that runs QEMU. Should it be installed to make this possible? Or is copying the source over not recommended and we should instead perform the git clone inside the VM? In that case it might make sense to add a /app/vmctl clone-repo command or similar to avoid lots of boilerplate?