Migrate CHANGELOG Process to Changie

[justinretzolk]

Introduction

The AWS Provider team is transitioning to use Changie for CHANGELOG management and generation. This issue is meant as a notification to contributors as well as a place to track how the transition will occur. Further information on the design decision will be included in one of the pull requests linked below.

Migration Strategy

The transition will be broken down into several distinct pull requests in order to help limit the scope of pull request reviews and provide a smoother overall experience for maintainers and contributors alike. Breaking the transition into distinct parts will also give a larger audience a chance to review the process for any pitfalls prior to the final cutover.

Phase 1: Foundation and Documentation ✅

Goal: Get the structure and conceptual docs reviewed before any automation lands.

What this does: Creates the .changes/ directory tree and Changie config alongside the existing .changelog/ system. Nothing runs automatically; no existing workflows are touched. Reviewers see all historical version changelogs and understand the intended structure before any automation lands.

Pull Request: #46623

Phase 2: Tooling and Initial Workflow Changes

Goal: Install the toolchain and add new validation/utility workflows that don't run against pull requests

What this does: Makes changie available via make tools and adds initial workflows and CI tools. No PR checks are added or modified — all existing CI gates remain exactly as they are.

Pull Request: #46625

Phase 3: Cutover to Changie

Goal: Migrate all pending change fragments, swap in the new automation, and remove the old scripts and workflows.

What this does: The actual switchover to using Changie. Pull Requests will now be checked to ensure they include Changie-style change fragments, old Makefile targets and GitHub Actions Workflows used only with go-changelog are removed. Any unmerged documentation changes (such as the one detailing the CHANGELOG process) are merged as well.

Pull Request: Pending

Phase 4: Final Cleanup

Goal: Remove .changelog/ and .archive/changelog/

What this does: Removes legacy change fragment directories that are no longer needed with Changie.

Pull Request: Pending

Would you like to implement the change?

Yes

[github-actions]

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