Quoth Sebastian Tennant <sebyte@smolny.plus.com>:

Mine is a standard sbcl installation ($ ./install.sh) yet I can only get this speed-up to work if I provide an absolute path to the core:

("sbcl" "--core" "/usr/local/lib/sbcl/sbcl.core-with-swank")

What am I missing?

Just came across this in sbcl's INSTALL file: 1.2. Finding ancillary files The SBCL runtime needs to be able to find the ancillary files associated with it: the "sbcl.core" file, and the contrib modules. Finding core can happen in three ways: 1. By default, in a location configured when the system was built. For binary distributions this is in "/usr/local/lib/sbcl". 2. By environment variable, in the directory named by the environment variable "SBCL_HOME". Example: $ export SBCL_HOME=/foo/bar/lib/sbcl $ sbcl If your "INSTALL_ROOT" was FOO, then your "SBCL_HOME" is "FOO/lib/sbcl". 3. By command line option: $ sbcl --core /foo/bar/sbcl.core This suggests that when the --core command-line option is used, an absolute path is precisely what is needed, and the fact that I can't get the inferior lisp process to run without specifying an absolute path (despite the fact my sbcl.core-with-swank is in the 'default location') pretty much seals it for me. The Slime manual suggests otherwise though (info "(slime) Loading Swank faster"): Then add this to your `.emacs': (setq slime-lisp-implementations '((sbcl ("sbcl" "--core" "sbcl.core-with-swank") :init (lambda (port-file _) (format "(swank:start-server %S)\n" port-file))))) Could someone clarify this situation? Sebastian -- Emacs' AlsaPlayer - Music Without Jolts Lightweight, full-featured and mindful of your idyllic happiness. http://home.gna.org/eap