We use Capistrano exclusively for deployment to live and pre-live environments, so imagine my surprise when, copying a configuration into files on a new app, that I started seeing this:
Flexo:app dansketcher$ cap production misc:show_path
triggering load callbacks
* 2013-01-31 13:17:53 executing `production'
triggering start callbacks for `misc:show_path'
* 2013-01-31 13:17:53 executing `multistage:ensure'
* 2013-01-31 13:17:53 executing `misc:show_path'
* executing "echo $PATH"
`misc:show_path' is only run for servers matching {}, but no servers matched
The ‘production’ stage was configured, but even adding things like raise '' in the config/deploy/production.rb file failed to have an effect. It was like the file wasn’t even being loaded, except that trying to execute against a non-existent stage (‘work_damn_you’ stage, anyone?) did raise an error.
In the end, out of desperation, I ran dos2unix on the files, which weirdly complained about a binary file. Hrm. I re-saved the files as UTF-8 and all started working.
So be warned.