How to install/upgrade Lisp libraries on Debian

Question

I recently discovered that some of my favorite libraries have been removed from Debian, e.g., Hunchentoot:

For a while now most Common Lisp projects do not do releases anymore, our plan is to move to proving a cl-build like environment inside debian

I've looked at the mailing lists and Debian Common Lisp homepage and not found anything else mentioning this.

Is there a standard way I'm supposed to be installing/upgrading libraries like Hunchentoot now? I can ASDF-install it, but now I'm dealing with 2 package systems, with their own verification system, etc. I'm using Debian specifically to avoid that mess.

The first question of the ASDF-install FAQ (which doesn't have a very solid answer) is "After you have installed some packages with asdf-install, how do you keep them up to date? This can be hard to do even manually", so I guess I'm not alone in finding this an unsatisfactory solution.

(Asked here instead of SU or SF because I think it's equally applicable to all three, and SO has the most traffic.)

Answer 1

While I still sometimes prefer manual installation, Quicklisp makes this answer more or less obsolete.

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I basically do everything by hand, and I don't even use asdf-install; just mere asdf. I'm not sure if that's an optimal solution, but for me it works quite well (but I don't use many libs; mostly Weitz' stuff which is usually of very high quality.)

Many people seem to use clbuild these days, at least that's how it seems to me.

Mudballs seemed very promising, but I think there is still no one continuing it.

Answer 2

On anything but Gentoo (which has a very well maintained Lisp overlay), I would use clbuild for now. I have the hope that XCVB will be usable soon.