UPDATE: This plugin has been updated.

I created a rails plugin to help me keep clients up to date on the status of projects. I use it in 2 instances – whenever I deploy a site, and whenever I send a weekly status report. For a deployment this is what I type at the command line:

rake svn:messages r=70

70 is the oldest subversion revision I care about. This gives me the following output:

* Started adding user registration system. (domelia)
* Now translating validation errors and their attribute names. (domelia)
* Reorganized views a bit. (domelia)
* Now sending activation email when user signs up. (domelia)
* Added support for "remember me" when logging in. (domelia)

For my deployment report, I typically remove the svn messages that aren’t immediately visible in the site or that don’t matter too much to the client. So, I’d remove “reorganized views a bit”.

For a weekly status report, I only care about the svn commits that I personally made. In that case, I’d say something like:

rake svn:messages r=32 u=domelia

This would give me similar output, except it will only show me the commits made by the domelia user.

I like the plugin because I can keep clients up to date and spend very little time doing it.

To install:

svn export https://terralien.devguard.com/svn/projects/plugins/svn_messages vendor/plugins/svn_messages