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In the case where your application is deployed on the same server as your Subversion repository, it can be helpful to access the repository via the file system rather than over the network.

set :repository, "file:///path/to/repository" 

However your workstation (from which you’ll run Capistrano) will need to access the repository over the network. This is accomplished by setting that local_respository parameter. “local”, in this case, meaning your local workstation.

set :local_repository, "http://host/svn/repository" 

Thanks to an article on my host, Slicehost, for pointing this out.