I totally understand how Quicklisp, Portage and source trees alike make life a lot easier however, I have always liked to build certain things manually from source. Reason being is that I maintain my own documentation of the process as I go along, and allows me to get a sense of the bigger picture. Finally, there is also a portability issue, that I can deduce my way through using the said approach. Totally a time consuming overcurve in some senses, but it could be beneficial in some sense.
I did see the Makefile in cl-opengl, but it seems to be only compiling things from the tools/ directory.
Trying not to take any more of you time than needed,
Nick