I'm not seeing any difference in SLIME's indentation between:
(defsystem #:gdl-ent
:description "Auto-generated asdf defsys from Genworks GDL cl-lite."
:author "Genworks and Dave Cooper unless otherwise indicated"
:serial t
:version "2013030200"
:depends-on (:gdl-build)
:components
((:file "source/package") (:file "source/assembly")
(:file "source/controller") (:file "source/agent")))
and:
(asdf:defsystem #:gdl-ent
:description "Auto-generated asdf defsys from Genworks GDL cl-lite."
:author "Genworks and Dave Cooper unless otherwise indicated"
:serial t
:version "2013030200"
:depends-on (:gdl-build)
:components
((:file "source/package") (:file "source/assembly")
(:file "source/controller") (:file "source/agent")))
This is with no (in-package ...) form at the beginning.
In any case, it looks like as long as the .asd files are used as intended, then no package prefix is needed on the (defsystem ...), and no (in-package ...) is needed at the top (when using any ASDF version).
I think the confusion started at a time when we were, for some reason, manually loading .asd files ourselves by calling (load ...), which according to my understanding is not and has never been an intended use of .asd files -- they are strictly to be considered as data files for use with supported ASDF (and Quicklisp) operators which expect to find .asd files. Although normal CL expressions are also allowed inside .asd files, the .asd files are never intended to be loaded with (load ...) by the user.