Just last Friday, Rob Conery and I announced that we were working on a Commerce Starter Kit v 3.0, reviving the spirit of the CSK - “Sell your stuff, not your soul” (I always loved that tag line!). The project will be hosted on CodePlex. The current 3.0 checkins do not represent the current state of affairs, but a very interim state. It does show the architectural direction though. I also packaged up the final release of CSK 2.0 that Rob and I collaborated on so long ago for those that are interested. CSK 2.0 will not be actively supported moving forward. Support for CSK 3.0 will be done on the ASP.NET Forums.
This is a quick update on the current status and a preliminary schedule for releases, etc. Keep in mind that this is preliminary and subject to change (in either direction).
November 1, 2008: First drop of CSK 3.0. We’ll call this one a “Community Tech Preview” (CTP) and, in the tradition of CTP’s, it will represent a work very much in progress. We should have all of the major UI components of the site in place and, to some extent, functional. Well, catalog and cart are functional now, checkout … that may not be quite there on Friday’s drop, but I hope to have it there. I’d rather have this CTP release sooner than later to get feedback and participation from the community as early in the process as possible.
December 1, 2008: CSK 3.0 Beta 1. This will be a stable release and we’re targeting to have it feature-complete. But we’ll still be working on any bugs and tightening down the hatches.
January 5, 2009: CSK 3.0 Beta 2. Final beta of CSK 3.0. Again, a stable release, feature complete with few bugs (hopefully) left so we can concentrate on performance tuning and the like. (Note: there will be some tuning throughout the process, but this will involved a major push on tuning.)
February 1, 2009: CSK 3.0 RTM. ‘Nuff said.
I would love for this schedule to actually be too conservative. I really think it is. But … there’s lots to do and I do have other stuff on my plate as well, so I’m playing it safe. In between these milestones, there will be other drops as work progresses, with at least 1 interim release in between the dates here.
If you are interested in working on CSK 3.0 and can commit to spending some time on it (that second part is the hard one!), let me know. This is especially true if you have features that you’d like to see implemented; that’s the best way to get those features in there! Keep in mind though that, much as I would like to, I won’t be giving everyone commit rights … I will need to see some contributions, etc. first. The reality is that we can’t have a free-for-all on the source tree; that would be bad for everyone involved.