diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index d950d421b5b12197dd9297cf32d73d01e727f88f..a19cf3d637925a24b3af26fbbed8c13de65ac72f 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,42 @@
+Fri Jan 17 2020 Marcin Åšlusarz <marcin.slusarz@intel.com>
+
+    * Version 1.8-rc1
+
+    This release:
+    - Introduces new API in libpmemobj for user-assisted defragmentation
+      (see pmemobj_defrag man page for details).
+    - Introduces experimental support for PPC64LE architecture.
+    - Introduces new flag in libpmemobj for opting-out of transaction aborts
+      on failure (POBJ_TX_NO_ABORT), along with new variants of existing APIs
+      that didn't accept flags (pmemobj_tx_xfree, pmemobj_tx_xpublish,
+      pmemobj_tx_xlock, pmemobj_tx_xlog_append_buffer, pmemobj_tx_xstrdup,
+      pmemobj_tx_xwcsdup).
+    - Moves out libvmem and libvmmalloc to the new repository
+      (https://github.com/pmem/vmem).
+
+    Other changes:
+    - obj: introduce new statistics useful for defrag
+    - obj: introduce transient/persistent statistics enabling
+    - obj: introduce pmemobj_tx_(set/get)_user_data funcs
+    - obj: introduce pmemobj_(set/get)_user_data funcs
+    - obj: disable workaround for offsetof() since VS 15.5 in public header
+    - common: drop support for libndctl < 63 on Linux
+    - pool: rename -N --no-exec to -d --dry-run
+
+    Notable bug fixes:
+    - obj: fix potential NULL-dereference in ulog_store
+    - obj: fix unintended recursive locking during palloc
+    - obj: fix lock release order in palloc publish
+    - obj: fix transient redo log of more than 64 entries
+    - obj: fix capacity ulog calculation
+    - obj: fix check of unaligned capacity size
+    - rpmem: add a missing case for GPSPM + FLUSH_STRICT
+    - pmem: fix pmemcheck support on platforms with eADR
+    - pool: fix possible memory leak
+    - rpmem: fix possible memory leak in rpmemd_config_read
+    - rpmem: fix possible memory leak in rpmemd_log_init
+    - rpmem: fix possible use-after-free
+
 Mon Sep 30 2019 Marcin Åšlusarz <marcin.slusarz@intel.com>
 
 	* Version 1.7
diff --git a/GIT_VERSION b/GIT_VERSION
deleted file mode 100644
index f59cc05cb6952f2fd8a3be03c1765c99881acb22..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
--- a/GIT_VERSION
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-$Format:%h %d$
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3f2a852fa4928a0959942b6bf7f754d73b45da7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+1.8-rc1