On the AWS Developer blog they've posted about a new update in their PHP SDK functionality: a "changelog builder" that helps with automated changelog generation.

Starting with version 3.22.10 of the AWS SDK for PHP, released February 23, 2017, the Changelog Builder automatically processes all changelog entries. Each pull request is required to have a changelog JSON blob as part of the request. The system also calculates the next version for the SDK based on the type of the changes that are defined in the given changelog JSON blob.

The update simplifies the process of adding release notes to the CHANGELOG.md file for each pull request. Each merged pull request that was part of the release results in a new entry to the CHANGELOG.md file. The entry describes the change and provides the TAG number and release date.

This changelog is generated from a required JSON document for each pull request that provides information about the type of change, category and a brief description. They explain each of these items to give a little more context as to what they should contain along with a few examples.

This is something that could definitely help to improve other libraries as well, gathering the required change information from the contributor rather than having a project administrator have to sift through the PR to locate all changes.