give patch local paths precedence in loader search

First off-- does anyone know if we ported the relatively recent changes to Vanilla's loader search order? One feature I remember is that it searches for binaries then abstraction for each path, rather than searching for binaries in all paths then searching for abstractions in all paths.

Anyhow, what I want is to give precedence to the patch local (or I guess "canvas local") paths over the system ones. Here's the behavior I want:

• If I put a single "list2symbol.pd" in the same directory as an empty patch and then open the empty patch in a freshly running Pd instance, I want to type [list2symbol] and be guaranteed to create my abstraction.
• Similarly-- suppose I put a single "list2symbol.pd" in a subdirectory "foo" that resides in the directory of my empty patch. If I open the empty patch in a freshly running Pd instance, I want to type [declare -path foo] then type [list2symbol] and be guaranteed that my abstraction loads.

This should make it possible to get minimally predictable behavior from two models of patching. The first is the Pd-extended model of just depending on the externals to be available in the distro. The second is putting everything needed into the patch directory or subdirs.