I found that ‘git push origin :branch_name’ will delete the repository from the remote server if the branch has been removed locally.

$ git push origin :rails3
To git@redconfetti.com:myrepo.git
 - [deleted]         rails3

1) First install the Capistrano gem

sudo gem install capistrano

2) Next you need to go into the directory of your Ruby on Rails application and capify it:

capify .

3) Next I recommend this article (I’ll rip off the deploy.rb soon and post it here)

http://www.zorched.net/2008/06/17/capistrano-deploy-with-git-and-passenger/

4) Once you’ve configured your deploy.rb, run this command to have it setup the directories on the remote server (releases, shared, logs, etc).

cap deploy:setup

5) Next run this command to get the list of other capistrano commands you can run:

cap -T

The output should look like

cap deploy               # Deploys your project.
cap deploy:check         # Test deployment dependencies.
cap deploy:cleanup       # Clean up old releases.
cap deploy:cold          # Deploys and starts a `cold' application.
cap deploy:migrate       # Run the migrate rake task.
cap deploy:migrations    # Deploy and run pending migrations.
cap deploy:pending       # Displays the commits since your last deploy.
cap deploy:pending:diff  # Displays the `diff' since your last deploy.
cap deploy:restart       # Restarting mod_rails with restart.txt
cap deploy:rollback      # Rolls back to a previous version and restarts.
cap deploy:rollback:code # Rolls back to the previously deployed version.
cap deploy:setup         # Prepares one or more servers for deployment.
cap deploy:start         # start task is a no-op with mod_rails
cap deploy:stop          # stop task is a no-op with mod_rails
cap deploy:symlink       # Updates the symlink to the most recently deployed ...
cap deploy:update        # Copies your project and updates the symlink.
cap deploy:update_code   # Copies your project to the remote servers.
cap deploy:upload        # Copy files to the currently deployed version.
cap deploy:web:disable   # Present a maintenance page to visitors.
cap deploy:web:enable    # Makes the application web-accessible again.
cap invoke               # Invoke a single command on the remote servers.
cap shell                # Begin an interactive Capistrano session.