Specifically, I'm looking for something that, given a single file, and an SVN history, will display insertions and deletions as a pretty animation.
That said: I figure that a list of version control visualizers might be a useful resource.
http://code.google.com/p/gource/ looks very pretty
I am not sure about pretty, but codeswarm is certainly one of the most impressive "commit history visualization" tool I have ever seen.
(source: infovis-wiki.net)
In a more practical way, you may also consider SVN Time-Lapse View
SVN Time-Lapse View is a cross-platform viewer that downloads all revisions of a file and lets you scroll through them by dragging a slider.
As you scroll, you are shown a visual diff of the current revision and the previous revision.
Thus you can see how a file evolved, and you can easily find the revision at which lines appeared, disappeared, or changed.
(not big on "animation", but still, can be useful)
Most of the VCS have a web or GUI interface such as gitk, hgk and so on. It shows the various "branches" and "merges" along the life of the repo but if you want something prettier then codeswarm is your answer :)
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/553478/history-visualization-tools-for-version-control-systems