diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
index 0cc6601..be24acb 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
@@ -51,3 +51,30 @@ Then you can use different commands to run various test scopes::
   $ python3 setup.py test
   # run all tests against multiple python versions (same as in travis)
   $ tox
+
+Releasing
+---------
+
+* Upgrade vcstools dependency version in `requirements.txt`
+* Update `src/vcstools/__version__.py`
+* Check `doc/changelog` is up to date
+* Check `stdeb.cfg` is up to date with OSRF buildfarm distros
+* prepare release dependencies::
+
+      pip install --upgrade setuptools wheel twine
+
+* Upload to testpypi::
+
+      python3 setup.py sdist bdist_wheel
+      twine upload --repository testpypi dist/*
+
+* Check testpypi download files and documentation look ok
+* Actually release::
+
+      twine upload dist/*
+
+* Create and push tag::
+
+      git tag x.y.z
+      git push
+      git push --tags
diff --git a/doc/changelog.rst b/doc/changelog.rst
index 54e5f22..8ddf33d 100644
--- a/doc/changelog.rst
+++ b/doc/changelog.rst
@@ -1,3 +1,20 @@
+Changelog
+=========
+
+0.1.18
+------
+
+- fix warnings by replacing yaml.load() with safe_load()
+- Re-add snapshot command called 'export' (#117, #120)
+- fix '-t' option not working for wstool remove
+- upgrade vcstools library version to 0.1.41, with new fixes:
+
+  - fix git submodule errors
+  - fix export_upstream for git submodules
+  - fix python3 incompatibility
+  - fix git fast-forward failures
+  - fix get_affected_files
+
 0.1.17
 ------
 
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index b27a0cf..609f7de 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-vcstools>=0.1.38
+vcstools>=0.1.42
 pyyaml
diff --git a/src/wstool/__version__.py b/src/wstool/__version__.py
index 9abe0e3..b2906ff 100644
--- a/src/wstool/__version__.py
+++ b/src/wstool/__version__.py
@@ -1 +1 @@
-version = '0.1.17'
+version = '0.1.18'