I don't think it gets any easier than selecting the tables you need and exporting only those into the live environment. Assuming you only work on templating, the template, snippet & chunk tables are all you need to export.
We usually take a copy, develop, and merge only once when the new features are supposed to go live this minimizes this trouble. Also the client can continue normally until d-day.
If youre doing a lot of snippet work you could always just include an actual php file instead and work with your editor directly towards those files, connect them to git and what not.