[thewitt]

I wish I could answer your questions more precisely, but no, Commerce will not be out in a couple of weeks.

phpShop-core RC1 - Release Candidate 1 - is the first release candidate for a new product base. phpShop-core is designed to be an application development platform for PHP applications.

RC2 is going to ship real soon now - this could be in a week - and replaces a number of things in RC1 (like PHPLIB templates, and integration of Smarty).

Once phpShop-Core final ships, Commerce development under Core will commence. Commerce will be a complete replacement for the existing phpShop shopping cart application, running under Core.

It's still a few months away at best by my estimates - though I'm not on the development team, I'm only guessing based on communications with a couple of the developers.

You phpShop work will likely not transfer as too much will be different between the new package and the old. Not that it won't be a good learning, but it's not likely to be directly applicable.

phpShop as it exists now is at the end of it's lifecycle and will not be developed further by the original development team. phpShop-Core and Commerce will be the replacement shopping cart application.

Does that help?

-t