ASDF operations using SLIME and SWANK won't work under Allegro's Modern (case-sensitive) lisp, because the symbol names are not in all caps as in ANSI lisp. Here's a small patch that makes it work under ACL mlisp as well as under normal ANSI lisps:
Index: swank-asdf.lisp =================================================================== RCS file: /project/slime/cvsroot/slime/contrib/swank-asdf.lisp,v retrieving revision 1.7 diff -b -u -F '^(def' -r1.7 swank-asdf.lisp --- swank-asdf.lisp 23 Oct 2008 21:28:03 -0000 1.7 +++ swank-asdf.lisp 25 May 2009 16:40:10 -0000 @@ -26,7 +26,9 @@ (defun operate-on-system (system-name op Example: (operate-on-system "SWANK" "COMPILE-OP" :force t)" (with-compilation-hooks () - (let ((operation (find-symbol operation-name :asdf))) + (let ((operation (or (find-symbol operation-name :asdf) + #+allegro + (find-symbol (string-downcase operation-name) :asdf)))) (when (null operation) (error "Couldn't find ASDF operation ~S" operation-name)) (apply #'asdf:operate operation system-name keyword-args))))