Nifty hack, but doesn't ncftp only upload changed files by default? ISTR running into this exact problem a few years back trying to deploy CakePHP apps to cheapo hosts.

Funny enough, I even did a blog post about it, though it was more about being able to do the equivalent of Rails environments than about the FTP thing: http://ertw.com/blog/2007/11/05/pushing-a-cakephp-app-from-d...