On Wednesday 15 January 2014 14:48:51 Fred Cooke wrote:
> I'd be with you, Mike, but these packages are regularly distributed
> without source control, as tarballs, and as such it's useful.

i don't think it is, but let's assume you're right.  there's no reason the 
dist steps can't autogenerate a full ChangeLog from git history and throw it 
into the tarball.  it's what other GNU projects are doing now (like 
coreutils).
-mike