Releasing a new version of software (Perl module) 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, commiting 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. 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.