I'm inclined to think that figuring out how to load ASDF from the cl-asdf debian package to override an ASDF that has been packaged with your implementation is no easier than doing so from cl.net. Indeed, it may actually be more complicated, since you have to figure out how to load from where the debian package puts asdf, instead of where you have put it in your own user directory.
So I suggest we just drop the cl-asdf package: the cost of maintaining it cannot be justified by the benefit it provides to the community.
That said, if the Debian community disagrees with me, I don't mind maintaining the debian packaging in the ASDF git repository. I just don't have the time and energy to take it that final step of maintaining an appropriate Debian build environment, building the package, and shipping it.
The cl-asdf package is useful for 1- use by CL implementation packages themselves, at compile-time, when they don't otherwise come with a recent enough version of ASDF (if at all). i.e. if someone wanted to update the package for GCL, or create one for SCL, etc. 2- for use by libraries and applications that require a version that is more recent than otherwise provided by CL implementation packages.
So I'd say that going forward, this could be done easily by whoever needs it for his own debian CL packages.
That said, I can do the asdf debian package one last time for 3.1.2. I've experimented a bit and come up with a better recipe. Apparently the trick to avoid dealing with complications is to work in a branch where the only changes since the upstream release tag are in the debian/ directory. If you let me do it, I'll do it in the release branch. I updated the bin/asdf-builder script to do the release (moving code from the Makefile and making it better — scripting is SO much better in Lisp). Of course, the script as exists in the release branch is insufficient, and since it does a git clean -xfd we need to extract it from master under another name everytime.
So: I committed some debian-only changes in my release branch (not pushed — but I can do it if you approve, and even upload), and ran: git show master:bin/asdf-builder > bin/x && chmod a+x bin/x && ./bin/x debian-package and it looks like it worked. I can push all that if you want, or show you how to do it. It's a matter of git checkout release ; git show master:debian/changelog > debian/changelog ; edit debian/changelog
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