Thanks for applying my patches to ASDF, as it now appears that ABCL trunk (svn r12551 and later) runs pretty well with ASDF-1.643. The previous problem I noted with the binary locations getting "collapsed" was our problem which I fixed in ABCL.
Attached is a (trivial) patch so that 'run-tests.sh' actually uses the flags argument.
ABCL now passes the ASDF test suite:
-#--------------------------------------- Using abcl --noinit Ran 21 tests: 21 passing and 0 failing all tests apparently successful -#---------------------------------------
After discussion on IRC and further thought, I no longer advocate that ASDF2 not make the relocating the FASLs the default. There are certainly decent arguments for it, and we do want progress in ASDF2, right? Instead, I would advise that you make a section in the (really excellent looking) manual that explicates the changes that an ASDF1 user—both with and without using ASDF-BINARY-LOCATIONS—should expect in ASDF2. And I would include the *LOAD-TRUENAME*/*LOAD-PATHNAME* issue (i.e. use a conditionalized ASDF:SYSTEM-DEFINITION-PATHNAME invocation) in that section.
Otherwise, ASDF2 looks quite cool. What's your timeframe for an official release? I'd include it as-is in ABCL, but don't want to chase all the release candidates to ASDF2.