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[hameau]

filesystems load files arbitrarily, you cannot guarantee the order, instead plugins should properly init after the common hook, NOT WHEN INCLUDED.

Shawn, I know that my 'solution' is nothing more than a pragmatic hack that happens to work in this case. However, aiui, the plugin loading order, though not predictable from server to server, is consistent for a given installation.

There seems to be some evidence that Ubuntu-based (kernel? filesystem?) servers treat files in reverse alphabetical order, which is what let me to the string substitution and it happened to work for me. Now, I also understand that my string substitution will have changed the file sizes, which may just have pushed the filesystem into treating it differently, for example, but for the moment, I'm delighted and I can get on with other things.

I know that you're already looking into more robust ways of determining plugin loading order in v3.4, which is, imo, now necessary. There are several cases in Extend of plugins to extend and improve other plugins, which necessarily must load in a specific order. If this feature (plugin loading order) is not available, it means that the original plugin must be forked and changed, leading to all sorts of problems for support and management of the whole system.

The only alternative would be to have a managed and curated Extend and who would do that? It's pretty amazing that Extend has continued to work as well as it does, for so long, given that it is more or less free (as in speech) for anyone to add anything, which says a lot for this community.