[Slime-devel] slime 2.4 with emacs 24.3.50: Loading problems after M-x slime

[Zach Beane]

joaotavora at gmail.com (João Távora) writes:

> What exactly is the use case that (ql:quickload :slime-quicklisp-helper)
> is good at solving? And how would it be easier/better/different than
>
>   M-x install-package RET slime-fancy RET
>
> (if that were possible)?

quicklisp-slime-helper was designed to improve two things.

First, installation used to be a real pain, what with using CVS, setting
up load paths for both ASDF and elisp, and configuring stuff. It was
intended to cut out all the fetching work and most of the configuring
work. If M-x install-package can do that now, that's one problem solved.

Second, it was meant to make it easy to go back in time
(http://blog.quicklisp.org/2011/08/going-back-in-dist-time.html) to work
with a swank from a particular timeframe, and load the right slime to be
compatible with it. I'm not sure if the emacs packaging system can help
with that, but if it can, that's cool.

Zach