We have been working on a REP for standardizing how changelogs should be
implemented by users so that they can be utilized in the ROS infrastructure
(wiki, and release tools) more effectively.

For those who have not been closely following the REP discussion, here is a
summary:

   - There may be one changelog for each catkin package
   - The changelog file, CHANGELOG.rst, must reside in the root of a
   package as a peer to the package.xml file
   - The changelog will be written in RST (with some restrictions on
   content)
   - The changelog will be parsed and injected into debian packages by bloom
   - The changelog will be parsed and injected into the wiki by rosdoc-lite
   - The changelog will have sections with titles like `<major.minor.patch>
   (<YYYY-MM-DD [HH:MM[:SS[ TZOFFSET]]])`

There are more diverse examples in the REP, but here is an example
CHANGELOG.rst file:

https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/bloom/blob/master/CHANGELOG.rst

As of catkin_pkg 0.1.11 there is a tool called `catkin_test_changelog`
which will parse your CHANGELOG.rst and warn you about any ignored sections.

You can always do a simple date, like 2013-04-10, but there is a convenient
git command to get the full timestamps of tags:

git log --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty="format:%ai %d"


If you are interested in this REP please have a look at the full REP:

http://ros.org/reps/rep-0132.html

And then vote or comment on the activation pull request:

https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/38

If you have concerns or comments about the REP, please read the "Concerns"
section of REP and the mailing list posts in the reference section before
bringing up something which has already been discussed and then comment on
the above pull request.

Thanks for your time,

-- 
William Woodall
ROS Development Team
william@osrfoundation.org
http://williamjwoodall.com/