After a script ran “gem update –system” and blew up a debian box for the nine millionth time, I’ve been on a kick to get rid of gem’s altogether. Here are some directions for build a deb for capistrano:

apt-get  install build-essential fakeroot ruby-pkg-tools
svn checkout svn://svn.debian.org/pkg-ruby-extras/packages-wip/capistrano/trunk/
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/33072/capistrano-2.2.0.tgz
tar -xvzf capistrano-2.2.0.tgz
mv trunk/* capistrano-2.2.0/
cd capistrano-2.2.0/
dch –v2.2.0
dpkg-buildpackage –rfakeroot

Or you can just grab my capistrano deb (for etch / hardy, any arch): capistrano_2.2.0_all.deb.