A repeat is not a barline and can come at any place in the bar. When a repeat falls at the beginning of a bar however, it often serves the same purpose as a barline. The catch is that in these situations the clef, key sig, and meter should be placed after the barline but before the repeat. I’m pretty sure we’d all be in agreement this looks fine at the beginning of a system, right?
The house style of many publishers (esp. 19th century - early 20th century) was to use the repeat as the barline when they coincided in the middle of the system and place these elements after, which is why it is so easy to find examples of what Andro is requesting. Dorico/Gould can say this is incorrect (IMO it is incorrect) but the fact remains that this is an established style with no shortage of examples in print by reputable publishers. It seems like something Dorico should support, even as archaic notation.
It also seems odd to me that Dorico will easily separate barline/clef-key-meter/repeat but links double barlines and repeats so they are not separate elements. For example, I can correctly have the repeat come after the key change at letter C here, but it is impossible to have a double barline at C.
It would be great if Dorico could be more accommodating in all of these matters.