> Alternatively, I would contemplate the possibility of including a
> configuration step in ECL that downloads the latest ASDF. That would be
> easy, just looking for the existence of internet connection + wget/curl, but
> we would need a stable and permanent address for ASDF files to be
> downloaded. I mean individual files, not really a tarball.
>

I wrote a script to do just that in sbcl's contrib/asdf. They didn't
get my latest version, but here's the Makefile target, that you can
tailor to your needs:

up:
       if [ -d asdf-upstream ] ; then \
       cd asdf-upstream ; git checkout release ; git reset --hard
release ; git pull -a ; else \
       git clone --branch release \
       git://common-lisp.net/projects/asdf/asdf.git asdf-upstream ; fi