Hello,

you can control this just by what folders you choose to copy between sites (so copy all but /data/content /data/media to live and only copy those folders back from live)

but if you want to/can only have the whole usync folder copied between sites I would suggest you use Hander Groups within the usyncbackoffice.config (see http://usync.readthedocs.io/handler-config/)

With that you can setup the handlers to do what you need, (see below) and then the only diffrence between live and production will be the group value.

(all the below settings are in /config/usyncbackoffice.config and would probibly need some tweaking to your exact needs. )

Import Dev Changes to Live (but not content).

  <Handlers Group="ConfigImport" EnableMissing="false">
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: TemplateHandler" Enabled="true" />

    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: LanguageHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DictionaryHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MacroHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeMappingHandler" Enabled="true" />

    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentHandler" Enabled="true" Actions="Events, Export"/>
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaHandler" Enabled="true" Actions="Events, Export"/>
  </Handlers>

This handler group would enable all the config stuff but only enable the saving of things to disk for Content and Media (meaning they never get imported).

*import just the content (live to dev) *

  <Handlers Group="ContentImport" EnableMissing="false">
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeHandler" Enabled="true"  />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: TemplateHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaTypeHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: LanguageHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DictionaryHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MacroHandler" Enabled="true" />
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: DataTypeMappingHandler" Enabled="true" />

    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: ContentHandler" Enabled="true" Actions="Import/>
    <HandlerConfig Name="uSync: MediaHandler" Enabled="true" Actions="Import"/>
  </Handlers>

then on live

<HandlerGroup>ConfigImport</HandlerGroup>

and dev

  <HandlerGroup>ContentImport</HandlerGroup>

I wouldn't turn off the actual import of config on dev, because you will want that for source control (so you might have multiple devs making changes, you will want that to be reflected on all developers pcs.