We released ASDF 2 on May 31st 2010. It has now been widely adopted by the CL community.
These implementations provide ASDF 2 in their latest release so you can just (require :asdf): (free) abcl ccl clisp cmucl ecl sbcl xcl; (proprietary) allegro.
These implementations work with ASDF 2 but don't bundle ASDF 2 yet: (proprietary) lispworks scl.
These implementations are obsolete, yet are somewhat supported by ASDF 2: (free) gcl mcl; (proprietary) cormancl genera.
ASDF is a tool for describing how source files are organized: what depends on which and when.
It is roughly what Common Lisp hackers use to build software where C hackers would use say GNU Make.
ASDF stands for Another System Definition Facility, in the continuity of the Lisp DEFSYSTEM of yore.
ASDF will not download missing software components for you. For that, you want quicklisp. (quicklisp builds upon ASDF.)
You can read our manual:
Regarding the internal design of ASDF and the work we did on ASDF 2, see the last draft version of our paper for ILC 2010, Evolving ASDF: More Cooperation, Less Coordination
Though they may lag behind the version here, ASDF comes bundled with most Lisps. To get the greatest and latest, you can:
git clone git://common-lisp.net/projects/asdf/asdf.git(note that our "master" branch is for current development; get our "release" branch for the latest stable release.);
To report bugs, you can use our launchpad project. If you're unsure about the bug or want to discuss how to fix it, you can send email to the project mailing-list below.
Join our mailing list, check the code out from git, send questions, ideas and patches!