In ubuntu, when using the packaged clisp and asdf (installable via apt-get), i'm unable to install quicklisp without some hacking around (it complains about the asdf version).
Ok, I never use the host os package manager for certain key things, including Lisp, Ruby. For Lisp, i get from the SBCL site or the proper site (SBCL, Clisp, Clozure CL) I am using. And i compile the source each time. (Obviously to bootstrap you gotta pull the binary the first time). After that, everything is a piece of cake.
I have done less with ruby lately, but as I recall the only way to survive was to use RVM or apparently now chruby to get everythin and compile it up.
> For Lisp, i get from the SBCL site or the proper site (SBCL, Clisp, Clozure CL) I am using
I'll try that approach. Never really tried SBCL or Clozure CL.
> And i compile the source each time
You mean that you compile, for instance, Clisp? I tried to do it once, because FFI usage is dependent of a the flag --with-dynamic-ffi being set in the ./configure step [1][2]. I don't remember exactly why, but I got some difficulties in the build process, but I managed to do it.
This may be a little out of scope, but does anybody know about a common lisp implementation that is more FFI-friendly?
I heard that clang is now the default C compiler on OS X? clisp can't be built reliably with clang on x86_64 (clisp people on irc thought it was likely a bug in clang).
sbcl doesn't rely on the C compiler so you should have no problems building it on mac OS. Clozure CL was originally a CL specifically for the mac, so it definitely should work fine. SBCL seems to be the most popular open-source implementation, as it can generate extremely good code, often with just minimal type annotations.
On Debian (and possibly Ubuntu) one can get the SBCL package from unstable (it doesn't depend on much) and go from there if installing from source is too much of a hassle.
Don't install any other Common Lisp stuff SBCL doesn't depend on from the Debian repository though, except maybe ASDF. Get everything else through Quicklisp.
But I agree with you, quicklisp is awesome.