so here is kind of the idea. but it doesn't work like it used to.

so here is kind of the idea.   but it doesn't work like it used to.
so I think I want to try to build a smarter "find everything without a dependency"
system that is more inline with how this is running now anyway - i.e.
go through the whole list, find nodes with no dependencies.  maybe the
original topological.sort() can do that, not sure.