"Dump log to visually appealing document" tool for Subversion?

Question

I'm considering switching from Subversion to Mercurial with a few repositories whose revision history I don't need at everyday work, but which would be nice to store in some kind of document - as proof of activity for the clients, as a quick way to look something up without having to dig in backup copies, etc.

I'm thinking about a program generating a HTML, PDF or OpenOffice document showing the revision history in a visually appealing way, and if possible the diffs to go with it.

Does anybody know whether such a tool exists for either Windows or Linux?

Out of time constraints, I'm looking for a ready-made solution: I will prefer that when it comes to accepting an answer. However, general advice on how to turn a svn log output into such a document is welcome, too.

Open Source would be preferred; a reasonably priced commercial tool would be an option, too.

Answer 1

WebSvn produces a nice HTML repository view and logs with diff functionality. I don't think there is a document export option however.

Answer 2

Understanding your preference for a ready-made solution, this is how I would do it if it came to rolling your own:

• Perl script that can accept the redirect output of svn log (e.g. ~/Scripts/svn-log-format.pl < svn log)
• Script parses the log and outputs TeX
• You have a pre-made TeX template with a header and footer which produce a nice PDF.

The output of svn log is formatted in a way which should be relatively simple for a better Perl hacker than I to parse out - that is, there are clear delimiters between commits, and the data line also has clear delimiters, so a straight text parsing shouldn't be too difficult. The challenge, I think, lies in defining the desired output.