There’s a pretty easy way to download and install a lot of Common Lisp software packages. It’s called ASDF-Install.

For some Lisp implementations, you may need to download and install ASDF-Install itself. In my case, I’m using SBCL, which already has ASDF-Install built in.

I added the following to my ~/.sbclrc to make things easier:

(require :asdf)
(require :asdf-install)

Once ASDF-Install is loaded, installing a package, let’s say for example Araneida (an extensible web server written in Common Lisp), is as easy as:

(asdf-install:install :araneida)

Here’s some of the software that I’ve installed with ASDF-Install:

araneida-version-0.90.1
cl-base64-3.3.1
cliki_0.4.4
diff_0.4
html-encode-1.2
ironclad_0.12
kmrcl-1.85
md5-1.8.5
net-telent-date_0.42
portable-clblog_0.222
rt-20040621
split-sequence
s-xml
trivial-configuration-parser-1.1
trivial-http-1.1
trivial-sockets_0.3
xmls-1.2