Cannot use 'import' statement in Grails Config

We have created a way of managing our 15+ environments using different configuration files stored under a directory called ./environment

The default configuration file ./grails-app/conf/Config.groovy pulls in these files as follows:

{{
environments {

development

perftest

selenium

...
}
}}

Where loader is an instance of our own class EnvironmentConfigLoader which we import at the top of the Config.groovy file.

If a fresh checkout of the project is done, hence the ~/.grails/projects/1.3.5/myprojectname is newly created, running 'grails run-war' or 'grails compile' does not work, with the following exception:

{{
org.codehaus.groovy.control.MultipleCompilationErrorsException: startup failed:
script12906073437641435994217.groovy: 4: unable to resolve class xxx.yyy.EnvironmentConfigLoader
@ line 4, column 1.
import xxx.yyy.EnvironmentConfigLoader
^
}}

We believe this is because the _{/.grails/projects/1.3.5/myprojectname/classes} directory has not yet been created, and this is indeed the case after the first grails compile or grails run-war call - the directory does not exist, since the compilation of the files in /.grails/projects/1.3.5/myprojectname/scriptCache could not complete.

It seems logical that the files in the application's classpath (i.e. ./src/*) should be compiled first, meaning that scripts, config etc. can then use classes on the application's classpath.

We have noticed that the same issue exists for plugins, whereby our './scripts/Events.groovy' script cannot import classes provided by plugins UNTIL at least one run-app has been done.