Generating GNU-style Changelog from git commits

From: David Chanters <david.chanters@googlemail.com>
Date: Apr 16, 2011, 22:46 UTC
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=j_Ge9h8+r8R-a5Fppan_2dtu5LA@mail.gmail.com>

[Please Cc me on replies.  Thanks!]

Hi,

Some projects maintain a ChangeLog file, which looks something like this:

2011-01-01  David Chanters  <d.c@example.com>
        * foo/bar.c (some_function):
         Changed static variable in some_function to auto.

etc., etc.

Here "foo" is some directory relative to the top-level directory the .git one is in.

These ChangeLog files are maintained manually, irrespective of the/any revision control system in use. I am wondering if it's possible if the project is in Git to be able to automatically append to such a ChangeLog file with each commit automatically, and have it formatted in the style above.

Is this possible? Is it a solved problem? If not, and I wanted to try myself, could someone point me at the git-specific tools I'd need to know to use to achieve it?

TIA! DC