Traditional version control systems like CVS, Subversion, Git, and Mercurial store snapshots of code at programmer defined 'commit points'. The entire state of the code is stored at these commit points. The problem with this approach, however, is that a lot of interesting things happen in between commits. The time in between commits is usually too long to tell meaningful stories. These systems do not animate the changes they store.
Tools like 'diff' can highlight the differences between two commits, but they do not animate them over long periods of time. Commit logs also don't help very much because it can be as hard to write a descriptive commit message as it is to write the code itself. One can write comments in the code but often the context of the changes is not relevant to everyone who might read the comments.
The Storyteller Version Control System records all programming information. Every new character, delete, copy and paste, and all file operations are recorded. It allows one to playback all of these programmer interactions with a set of code. The tool allows one to record these playbacks for others to see how a set of code has evolved. Further, developers can write comments that are specific to a playback. This allows truly accurate and descriptive logging of changes in a version control system.
Armed with this additional information the team can go back in time and see how a set of code has evolved. There are filters to limit the amount of information in a playback. For example, one can ask to see what changes developers Bob and Sally made to files prog1.java and prog2.java last week. Or, one can ask to see what code of Bob's has Sally deleted in the last month. Even after short periods of time the context information about why a set of code has changed is lost. We are not good documenters of this information. Storyteller allows one to describe the important reasons why we make changes and makes these stories easily searchable from code, by developer, by feature, etc.
The tool promotes learning in a software development team. Programming is a solitary activity. It is difficult to become a better programmer because we cannot easily see how better programmers go about writing code. It is important for less experienced developers see more experienced programmers make good decisions, recover from bad decisions, and hear the reason why changes are being made in the first place.
This kind of information can be spread in code reviews, pair programming sessions, and in daily stand up meetings. None of this information, however, is stored and made searchable for later. So, inevitably it gets lost as well. The Storyteller tool automates the recording of this important context information while giving the team a full featured version control tool.
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