Dear Anton,
the failure you found seems to be a case of quicklisp compiling asdf without having loaded it as source first.
I've modified ASDF so that each and every form is in an eval-when, which allows ASDF to be compiled without having been loaded (as source) first.
I also fixed other issues reported on launchpad.
And I also fixed another issue revealed by your tests, whereby the version of the asdf system itself wasn't properly set for the fallback system (when no asdf.asd is registered).
Can you test again with the latest ASDF?
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org People are not born rich and become poor because of some dreadful phenomenon. They are born deprived of anything and become rich when they do but by the accumulated fruits of their own and their ancestors' labor: their capital.