Problems with cascading CP themes

I was under the impression that the CP cascading feature extended to the view files as well.

I created a new folder in my cp_themes folder called test. I copied just homepage.php from the default theme to my new theme. So now my theme contains one file: homepage.php. Now if I select the test theme as my CP theme and go to the homepage, I get an error:

Unable to load the requested file: _shared/header.php

So it seems to me that calling a load->view inside a loaded view should continue to cascade, that is look for it in my folder, and if it’s not there go to the default folder. But instead I get an error.

Experiment 2. Delete my homepage.php, create a _shared folder, and create one file in there called main_menu.php. So now I would expect the default homepage view to load, with my custom _shared/main_menu.php. It does not, it loads the default main_menu.

I think this can be traced back to the way you handle _ci_view_path when it’s an array. At some point that array isn’t available to subsequent load->view’s. I also notice that some images are missing, for instance the homepage icon in the top nav.

What’s unclear to me, is whether I misunderstood and am therefor not using them correctly.