What it is

ASDF-Install is the start of Common Lisp's answer to CPAN: an internet-based, dependency-chasing, installation system. ASDF-Install was originally written for SBCL by Dan Barlow and then ported to other Lisps by Edi Weitz and many others. It knows how to work with systems defined by either ASDF or MK-Defsystem.

ASDF-Install is a tool for downloading and installing lisp packages. It:

• downloads lisp libraries (defined using either ASDF or MK-Defsystem) and installs them in the local file system,

• chases sub-system dependencies, and

• uses PGP signatures to verify the provenance of the downloaded code (requires GPG)

The best sources of information on ASDF-Install are

• The tutorial (written by Edi Weitz and now maintained by Gary King)

• its CLiki page

Mailing Lists

• asdf-install-devel: A list for questions, patches, bug reports, and so on; It's for everything.

• You can also use the CCLAN mailing list.

Where is it

SBCL (since 0.8.3) and OpenMCL (since 0.14.1) come with a version of ASDF-Install. You can get the latest version with this gzipped tar file. There is also a darcs repository at:

darcs get http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf-install 

Finally, you should be able to get the latest version using ASDF-Install itself (though you will probably need to edit your local configuration files in order to use this version.

There is now an unstable darcs repository at

darcs get http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf-install/asdf-install-unstable 

This will be used to test new features before they migrate into the stable branch. A (signed) tarball of this repository is in

http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf-install/asdf-install-unstable/asdf-install.tar.gz 

What is happening