Manually installing ASDF packages for SBCL

When I started getting back into Lisp earlier this year, after a bit of reading I quickly found out that ASDF was the more popular method for installing third-party packages. I also quickly found a problem though: simply typing (asdf-install:install 'package-name) doesn't always work, because some packages, while they have ASDF system files written, are not uploaded to - or are not up to date on - the remote site (cliki.net) and thus fail when you try to install it. So when you're out of options and decide to download or checkout the source for the package, how the hell do you install it?

In your home directory you should have a .sbcl directory. Inside this directory you should have two more directories: site and systems. To manually install a package:

• Unzip/untar/checkout the source code into its own directory inside the site directory. For example, on my machine cl-ppcre is unpackaged into .sbcl/site/cl-ppcre-2.0.1/
• Create a symlink from the ASDF system file to the systems directory. For example, .sbcl/site/cl-ppcre-2.0.1/cl-ppcre.asd is symlinked to .sbcl/systems/cl-ppcre.asd

That should be it. Now doing a (require 'cl-ppcre) in SLIME locates the ASDF system file in .sbcl/systems/ and loads the library as expected.

Note: If your SBCL doesn't look in systems for packages, you can check the asdf:*central-registry* variable for the correct directory.

Another note: If you prefer to install packages for the entire system rather than just your specific user, ASDF system symlinks live in /usr/local/lib/sbcl/site-systems (assuming you installed SBCL in /usr/local).

Last note, I promise: The obvious shortcoming of manually installing libraries is it won't automatically retrieve dependencies for you :(