Yes I think you got it now, re:
So how can we track the progress of this work/feature request. It is very important to many of us, is there a way you can gauge input and prioritize this according to demand AND is there a way to know if this is something being actively worked on?
I am not following how the shipping routes apply to out of stock items. It seems from what you have shared, shipping routes are global rules and not impacted by stock availbility in any given location. It tells Shopify to fulfill all orders from a certain location (or high level criteria) from a certain location. But how would that help blocking them from checking out if a certain item is out of stock in their market/country? Lets use the example from the support article. If we had an item Y that we sell in all three markets (USA, Canada, Spain). The US location has 100 pieces, Canada has 50 pieces, but Spain currently has 0 pieces. We also have item X which does have stock in all three countries. If a customer sets their location to Spain, and they add both item X and item Y to their cart, what would the routing rules do in this case to address the issue being raised? 1- How do we set up the routing rules to address this (as I see no place to address this scenario in what you have shared) 2- What does the customer then see/experience at the time of check out?