Playing with LISP on Debian Squeeze

I haven’t looked up at how you play with LISP using Vim. Not really interested either since I’m committed to Emacs *rolls eyes*.
So, assuming you’ve already done aptitude install emacs23, Let’s go ahead and aptitude install sbcl cl-asdf slime. When in doubt aptitude show sbcl or aptitude show cl-asdf.

My motivation for this post in the first place was to document the quirks with the installation I was facing last night. If you happen to notice the following with the above aptitude install:

Setting up cl-asdf (1:20090819-3) ...
Reinstalling for sbcl
Recompiling Common Lisp Controller for sbcl
/usr/lib/common-lisp/bin/sbcl.sh loading and dumping clc.
; loading system definition from /usr/lib/sbcl/sb-grovel/sb-grovel.asd into
; #
; registering # as SB-GROVEL
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition

Error running init-common-lisp-controller-v4: Lock on package SB-IMPL violated
when interning NATIVE-FILE-KIND.
See also:
The SBCL Manual, Node "Package Locks"
mv: cannot stat `sbcl-new.core': No such file or directory
FAILED
Done rebuilding
Setting up cl-swank (1:20090908-1) ...
Setting up emacs (23.1+1-4) ...
Setting up sbcl (1:1.0.25.0-1) ...
/usr/lib/common-lisp/bin/sbcl.sh loading and dumping clc.
; loading system definition from /usr/lib/sbcl/sb-grovel/sb-grovel.asd into
; #
; registering # as SB-GROVEL
;
; compilation unit aborted
; caught 1 fatal ERROR condition

Error running init-common-lisp-controller-v4: Lock on package SB-IMPL violated
when interning NATIVE-FILE-KIND.
See also:
The SBCL Manual, Node "Package Locks"
mv: cannot stat `sbcl-new.core': No such file or directory
FAILED

Your slime setup isn’t going to be functional. Fret not. Read on.

From Debian BTS bug #549528

=======BEGIN PATCH===================
--- /usr/share/common-lisp/source/common-lisp-controller/post-sysdef-install.lisp.orig 2009-10-21 14:42:00.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/share/common-lisp/source/common-lisp-controller/post-sysdef-install.lisp 2009-10-21 14:40:59.000000000 -0400
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
#+sbcl
(defun get-owner-and-mode (directory)
(when (eq :directory
- (sb-impl::native-file-kind (namestring directory)))
+ (sb-impl::unix-file-kind (namestring directory)))
;; check who owns it
(multiple-value-bind (res dev ino mode nlink uid gid rdev size atime mtime)
(sb-unix:unix-stat (namestring directory))
=======END PATCH=================

Followed by,

dpkg-reconfigure cl-asdf
dpkg-reconfigure sbcl

Append the following to your .emacs, if you haven’t already.
;; Slime
(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/share/common-list/source/slime/")
(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/bin/sbcl")
(require 'slime)
(slime-setup)

And your Emacs is ready to roll.