cl: loading cl+ssl on guix or nix

Table of Contents

Context: for development, I prefer to load my common lisp libraries from quicklisp because it's more flexible that loading them from nix or guix's store. The main caveat, is that it doesn't work so well with systems that uses CFFI. It is much easier to load those systems from the store (when available). The system cl+ssl is one such package that I often use.

Here's an example of what usually happens when trying to load a system that uses CFFI from quicklisp: 

CL-USER> (ql:quickload :cl+ssl)
To load "cl+ssl":
  Load 1 ASDF system:
    cl+ssl
; Loading "cl+ssl"
............
debugger invoked on a CFFI:LOAD-FOREIGN-LIBRARY-ERROR in thread
#<THREAD tid=16059 "main thread" RUNNING {100A660003}>:
  Unable to load any of the alternatives:
   ("libcrypto.so.1.1" "libcrypto.so.1.0.0" "libcrypto.so.3" "libcrypto.so")

cffi fails to find the shared libraries because it is (usually) told to look in standard locations, but shared libraries are not provided at those locations under guix or nix.

1. Where is the system loaded from?

As explained in common lisp on guix, in guix, asdf is patched to load configurations from directories in the environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS.

For example, if the package sbcl-cl+ssl (a variant of cl-cl+ssl) is installed, we can find the corresponding asdf configuration files 

> echo $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS | tr : '\n' | xargs -n 1 find | grep -F 'cl+ssl'
/home/fstamour/.guix-home/profile/etc/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/50-cl+ssl.conf
/home/fstamour/.guix-home/profile/etc/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/50-cl+ssl.conf

2. Troubleshooting

2.1. check where the system is loaded from

(asdf:locate-system :cl+ssl)

2.2. make sure you don't call (ql:use-only-quicklisp-systems)

In the end, that was my issue 🙃

2.3. Try to locate and load the system without user configurations

To confirm that sbcl, asdf and cl+ssl are configured correctly. 

$ sbcl --no-userinit
*(require 'asdf)
("ASDF" "asdf" "UIOP" "uiop")
* (asdf:locate-system :cl+ssl)
T
NIL
#P"/gnu/store/v0h4ija8d9h43d6x1wmp96w4bygb63jd-sbcl-cl+ssl-0.0.0-6.17d5cdd/share/common-lisp/sbcl/cl+ssl/cl+ssl.asd"
NIL
NIL
NIL
NIL

3. Related notes

4. Backlinks

Created: 2025-03-20 Thu 01:16