> I don't like to be forced to re-compile it in order to load it for the
> following reasons:

ASDF solves most of these problems, including fasl file placement,
especially if you are willing to write a line or two to load your
codebase with some debugging extras (a (DECLAIM (OPTIMIZE DEBUG)), and
i also have some macros that react to variables, notably dribble level
logging stops being a no-op).

among the things you listed the only thing that i don't know how to
solve in my ASDF/slime setup is losing track of what i've edited and
haven't given to the lisp for redefinition yet. what i do is i keep
track of it in my head, and whenever i suspect that things may be out
of sync, then i press 3 key combination to restart the lisp and
recompile/reload the project.

hth,