Perhaps I missed earlier slime-devel message traffic on this issue.
I have recently switched to using the recent (checked out cvs version of slime on Dec 30) with sbcl-1.0.54-x86-64-linux-binary.
The CVS/Entries file shows: /slime.el/1.1392/Sat Dec 24 17:45:23 2011//
When I start sbcl using slime everything looks good, except Lisp-Mode buffers do not have "SLIME" "REPL" ... entries in the Emacs main menu-bar. The *slime-repl buffer has these entries.
I am using the slime-fancy:
(defvar slime-default-contribs '(slime-fancy))
I have started emacs without my normal .emacs initialization in an attempt to diagnose the problem, and supplying the bare minimum commands to start slime. Same problem.
Any suggestions?