Resolving this bug might look something like the attached patch. I'm not sure how often capistrano is used without rails, so it might better be a suggests. I also know it's possible to do non-rails deployments without the railsless- deploy gem, so the proposed description is not 100% correct.
Food for thought for the new maintainers. I don't propose applying the patch as is. Scott K
diff -u capistrano-2.5.9/debian/control capistrano-2.5.9/debian/control
--- capistrano-2.5.9/debian/control
+++ capistrano-2.5.9/debian/control
@@ -12,13 +13,15 @@
Package: capistrano
Architecture: all
Depends: ruby1.8, libnet-ssh2-ruby1.8, libnet-ssh-gateway-ruby1.8, libnet-sftp2-ruby1.8, libnet-scp-ruby1.8, libhighline-ruby1.8, ${misc:Depends}
+Recommends: rails
Description: Executes commands in parallel on multiples servers
Capistrano is great for automating tasks via SSH on remote servers, like
software installation, application deployment, configuration management,
ad hoc server monitoring, and more. Ideal for system administrators, whether
professional or incidental. Easy to customize. Its configuration files use
the Ruby programming language syntax, but you don't need to know Ruby to do
- most things with Capistrano.
+ most things with Capistrano. It uses rails, but can be used without it using
+ the railsless-deploy gem.
.
Capistrano is easy to extend. It's written in the Ruby programming language,
and may be extended easily by writing additional Ruby modules.
diff -u capistrano-2.5.9/debian/changelog capistrano-2.5.9/debian/changelog
--- capistrano-2.5.9/debian/changelog
+++ capistrano-2.5.9/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+capistrano (2.9.0-2) unstable; urgency=low
+
+ * Add rails to recommends
+ * Update description to mention rails and the alternative of the
+ railsless-deploy gem
+
+ -- Scott Kitterman <sc...@kitterman.com> Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:45:07 -0500
+
capistrano (2.9.0-1) unstable; urgency=low
* New upstream release.
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