it's capistrano, choose to deploy via git/scp/whatever. getting the code to the server is akin to an implementation detail (for lack of a better term). I too use chef, but that has nothing to do with this.

earlier when I said I don't keep gitlab in a repository I meant I don't keep it in a centralized repository. apologies for that.

I really fail to see how this is any more "restrictive" (or restrictive at all) than yours. should this pull request get merged there would be nothing stopping you from doing your team's regular changes. just like any project that comes with an example deploy script.