Releasing a new version of software takes a lot of steps... finding
the next version number (and making sure you didn't already use that
version number before), making sure your changelog is updated, making
sure your "make dist" results in a tarball that builds, committing
changes (with updated version number), tagging, and uploading the
tarball somewhere.

Or maybe more steps. Or not some of the above. Maybe you forgot
something! And maybe you manage multiple projects, and each project
has a different release process.

This is all a pain in the ass.

You want to be hacking, not jumping through hoops.

Your contributors want to see their patches actually make it into a
release, which won't happen if you're afraid of releases.

shipit automates all the hell. It makes life beautiful.