New at this, sure could use a pointer. I'm not able to get the code to build consistently. It works only after a failure. So I have to do it twice to get it to go. Sure would like to know what is wrong here. These are the directories: /home/LE/sbcl/LE.asd ;holds the definition, as shown below /home/LE/sbcl/src ;holds the lisp source files for my project The system is Debian, udpated today. quicklisp is installed. These are the commands I type: (require :asdf) (pushnew (truename ".") asdf:*central-registry* :test #'equal) (asdf:load-system :LE) (require :LE) (use-package 'LE) in a fresh environment this fails, and dumps me in the debugger, asdf:load-system tells me: "Component :LE not found: Then I exit the debugger, and run it a second time and it works. Not sure, may need quotes the first time, a colon the second, i.e. it is quirky. I have tried a lot of variations of the above, pretty much every example I've been able to find, some have "LE" instead of :LE everywhere. Here is the value of asdf:*central-registry* after the push: * asdf:*central-registry* (#P"/home/LE/sbcl/" #P"/home/mordecai/quicklisp/quicklisp/") Here is the asdf file that is located in /home/LE/sbcl: (in-package :asdf-user) (defsystem #:LE :name "LE" :version "0.1" :author "Thomas W. Lynch <thomas.lynch@reasoningtechnology.com>" :description "Lynch's extensions" :depends-on ("local-time") ;; :serial t :components((:module "src" :components ( (:file "package") (:file "fundamental" :depends-on ("package")) (:file "test" :depends-on ("fundamental")) (:file "string" :depends-on ("test")) (:file "functions" :depends-on ("test")) (:file "list-0" :depends-on ("functions")) ;; (:file "list-L" :depends-on ("list-0")) ))))