public final class GrailsPluginSorter
extends java.lang.Object

Canonical topological sort for Grails plugins based on loadAfter and loadBefore declarations.

This class provides the single shared implementation of plugin ordering that is used by both DefaultGrailsPluginManager (at runtime, operating on GrailsPlugin instances) and GrailsEnvironmentPostProcessor (early in the lifecycle, operating on lightweight PluginInfo records before the ApplicationContext is available).

The algorithm is a DFS-based topological sort:

1. loadAfter creates edges from a plugin to its dependencies (the plugin must load after the named plugins).
2. loadBefore creates reverse edges (the named plugin must load after this plugin).
3. A recursive DFS visits dependencies first, then adds the current node, producing a valid topological order.

Note: dependsOn is intentionally not used for ordering. In the original DefaultGrailsPluginManager, dependsOn is only used for dependency resolution (checking that required plugins are present), not for determining load order. Load order is controlled exclusively by loadAfter and loadBefore.

The sort is generic: callers provide accessor functions so the same algorithm works with any plugin representation (full GrailsPlugin objects, lightweight metadata records, etc.).

Since:

7.1