looks like most of the issues are because we're losing insert ordering

on cycles.  so lets reintroduce the organize as tree component, which
works here.   still need to make it meaningful by teaching the save/delete state
actions to receive a set of items to match up

lib/sqlalchemy/orm/unitofwork.py

@@ -219,8 +219,21 @@ class UOWTransaction(object):
         print "------------------------"
         print self.dependencies
         print sort
-        for rec in sort:
-            rec.execute(self)
+        
+        if cycles:
+            # organize into a tree so that groups of nodes can be 
+            # merged together, allowing better maintenance of insert
+            # ordering and other things
+            (head, children) = topological.organize_as_tree(self.dependencies, sort)
+            stack = [(head, children)]
+            
+            while stack:
+                node, children = stack.pop()
+                node.execute(self)
+                stack += children
+        else:
+            for rec in sort:
+                rec.execute(self)
             
 
     def finalize_flush_changes(self):

lib/sqlalchemy/topological.py

@@ -114,3 +114,50 @@ def find_cycles(tuples, allitems):
             else:
                 node = stack.pop()
     return output
+
+
+def organize_as_tree(tuples, allitems):
+    """Given a list of sorted nodes from a topological sort, organize the
+    nodes into a tree structure, with as many non-dependent nodes
+    set as siblings to each other as possible.
+
+    returns nodes as tuples (item, children).
+    """
+
+    nodes = allitems
+    edges = _EdgeCollection(tuples)
+    children = util.defaultdict(list)
+    
+    if not nodes:
+        return None
+    # a list of all currently independent subtrees as a tuple of
+    # (root_node, set_of_all_tree_nodes, set_of_all_cycle_nodes_in_tree)
+    # order of the list has no semantics for the algorithmic
+    independents = []
+    # in reverse topological order
+    for node in reversed(nodes):
+        # nodes subtree and cycles contain the node itself
+        subtree = set([node])
+        # get a set of dependent nodes of node and its cycles
+        nodealldeps = edges.outgoing(node)
+        if nodealldeps:
+            # iterate over independent node indexes in reverse order so we can efficiently remove them
+            for index in xrange(len(independents) - 1, -1, -1):
+                child, childsubtree = independents[index]
+                # if there is a dependency between this node and an independent node
+                if (childsubtree.intersection(nodealldeps)):
+                    # prepend child to nodes children
+                    # (append should be fine, but previous implemetation used prepend)
+                    children[node][0:0] = [(child, children[child])]
+                    # merge childs subtree and cycles
+                    subtree.update(childsubtree)
+                    # remove the child from list of independent subtrees
+                    independents[index:index+1] = []
+        # add node as a new independent subtree
+        independents.append((node, subtree))
+    # choose an arbitrary node from list of all independent subtrees
+    head = independents.pop()[0]
+    # add all other independent subtrees as a child of the chosen root
+    # used prepend [0:0] instead of extend to maintain exact behaviour of previous implementation
+    children[head][0:0] = [(i[0], children[i[0]]) for i in independents]
+    return (head, children[head])

test/orm/test_unitofworkv2.py

@@ -371,4 +371,26 @@ class SingleCycleTest(UOWTest):
         
         sess.delete(n1)
         sess.delete(n3)
-        sess.flush()
+        sess.flush()
+        
+    def test_bidirectional_multilevel_save(self):
+        mapper(Node, nodes, properties={
+            'children':relationship(Node, 
+                backref=backref('parent', remote_side=nodes.c.id)
+            )
+        })
+        sess = create_session()
+        n1 = Node(data='n1')
+        n1.children.append(Node(data='n11'))
+        n1.children.append(Node(data='n12'))
+        n1.children.append(Node(data='n13'))
+        n1.children[1].children.append(Node(data='n121'))
+        n1.children[1].children.append(Node(data='n122'))
+        n1.children[1].children.append(Node(data='n123'))
+        sess.add(n1)
+        sess.flush()
+#        self.assert_sql_execution(
+#                testing.db,
+ #               sess.flush,
+ #       )
+