We wrote and use minicap (https://github.com/well/minicap https://github.com/well/minicap) to help with this. The problem with capistrano is that it tries to a

We wrote and use minicap (https://github.com/well/minicap https://github.com/well/minicap) to help with this. The problem with capistrano is that it tries to abstract a bit too much of the underlying project and deployment environment away. minicap aims to fix that by providing a minimal, git-centric remote footprint. cap provides a great foundation, but makes a couple of mistakes in its recipes that are easily remedied with a minimalist approach like we've taken in minicap.