Setup   
I had a lot of trouble with online recipes not matching the version of Capistrano I had. I settled on Capistrano v2.15.5 since that's what the Blacklight project is using.
You'll Ruby, Capistrano, PHP, MySQL, Git, drush, and a server to run the Drupal site.

Install capistrano:

gem install capistrano
gem install capistrano-ext

Local Directory  

Your development/site building happens here. It could be on a development machine also.

Set up a git repository for the site on https://git.library.cornell.edu/ - example https://git.library.cornell.edu/featureserver_test_library_cornell_edumkdir featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu

cd featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu
git init
touch README.txt
git add README.txt
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin git@git.library.cornell.edu:featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu.git
git push -u origin master

Set up the local directory

• featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu
  • .git
  • .gitignore
  • README.txt
  • backup/ - place for backup files
  • private_files/ - point Drupal's private file directory at this directory (later)
  • public/ - put your Drupal site here (later)

Here's what my .gitignore looks like.

Let capistrano create its default files

bash> cd featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu
bash> capify .

Now the directory looks like this:

• featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu
  • .git
  • .gitignore
  • Capfile
  • config
    • deploy.rb
  • README.txt
  • backup/ - place for backup files
  • private_files/ - point Drupal's private file directory at this directory (later)
  • public/ - put your Drupal site here (later)

Change the default deploy.rb to add stages (eg. staging, production) and add a deploy directory containing a file for each stage.

• featureserver_test_library_cornell_edu
  • .git
  • .gitignore
  • Capfile
  • config
    • deploy
      • staging.rb
      • production.rb
    • deploy.rb
  • README.txt
  • backup/ - place for backup files
  • private_files/ - point Drupal's private file directory at this directory (later)
  • public/ - put your Drupal site here (later)

Server Directory