There are plans to implement a tool that can produce a Version Description Document (VDD). Since SCM changes are integrated with bug-tracking, it is possible to produce a list of changes that occured for a particular version of a software at a level that's higher than source changes.
ChangeLog information derived strictly from the SCM system, such as a report produced using the cvs2cl tool for CVS or using 'svn log' in Subversion, is overly detailed. It describes software changesets at a lower level, which interests mostly developers. It is of little value to a user simply interested in a summary of added features. Moreover, when multiple changesets are committed in response to a defect, such a document becomes lengthy. It takes considerable time to follow the history of changes and decipher if, or how, a defect was corrected.
Instead, a VDD will report at a higher level a summary of the features/defects worked on and why, using information recorded in the bug-tracking system. It will provide additional useful information such as resolution status, bug owner, severity, and priority. It will also report what changes occured at a lower level in the SCM system per bug, effectively superseding ChangeLog documents produced strictly from the SCM system. Without integration of SCM with bug-tracking, this level of detail in a release document would not be possible.
Given two SCM label names (tag or branch names), this tool will
query the SCM tool for the dates the labels were applied. It
will then query the bug-tracking system to produce a report of
the bugs worked between that date range. A VDD can reflect
decisions of the development team which are not documented in
the SCM logs, such as choosing to not add a feature, resolving
it as WONTFIX. It may also display bugs that were
added in the period between releases but not worked yet,
alerting users of newly discovered defects.
A VDD document can be generated using the command scmbug_vdd_generator. An example producing this document is shown in Figure 7-4.
Figure 7-4. Generating a Version Description Document.
$ scmbug_vdd_generator --scm=Subversion --product=TestProduct \
--repository=/tmp/testrepository --from=SCMBUG_RELEASE_0-8-1 \
--to=SCMBUG_RELEASE_0-8-2
The goal is to eventually apply XSLT transformations on the XML document produced, that should be standardized as a DTD, to produce HTML, PDF, etc.