Loading a Slime module defined with define-slime-contribs will load its slime-dependencies from anywhere in the Emacs load-path. Swank, however, has its own load-path, so modules with Swank contrib dependencies don't work if they're in a non-default location.

For example, if I have a module containing:

(require 'slime)

(define-slime-contrib my-slime-module

"My custom Slime module"

(:swank-dependencies my-swank-module))

(provides 'my-slime-module)

Then running the following will fail if that module is anywhere other than the default SLIME directory:

(require 'my-slime-module)

(slime-setup '(my-slime-module))

I've seen two work-arounds, neither of them ideal:

1. Put something in ~/.swank.lisp to modify swank::*load-path*. (That works, but requires more setup and I have to change it if I'm loading from a different directory.)

2. Leave out that dependency from :swank-dependencies and add a hook to 'slime-connected-hook (called after slime-load-contribs) that calls slime-load-file. (That works, but is quite messy.)

Is there a supported way for adding directories to the Swank load-path from SLIME? Should define-slime-contrib have a :swank-paths parameter or something?

Peace,

-Sam