slime-init-command fails to use the proper directory for slime-backend

[kinderferraz]

Hi. I'm having the following problem when loading slime from anywhere but ~/.emacs.d/elapa/slime-x.xx.

System info:
Emacs 29.1 (snap)
Slime 2.28
Ubuntu 22.04

When starting slime with M-x slime i get the error message in *inferior-lisp*:

I was able to find where the string passed to inferior lisp is generated, slime-init-command, and placed a few debugging messages in the function to see the values os the variables used:

The lines starting with slime-path, slime-backend and loader are the relevant ones:

• the first is printed just after the variable is set
• the second at the beginning of slime-init-command and
• the last before the swank init command is passed to inferior lisp.

[pedro-w]

I tried to reproduce this but I couldn't quite follow what you have done. I tried this

1. Clone a fresh copy of slime into /tmp
2. Start emacs as emacs -q to make sure no other slime gets loaded
3. In the scratch buffer:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/tmp/slime")
(require 'slime-autoloads)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/sbcl")

(press C-j after each and obviously put in wherever sbcl is on your system!)

and this started a slime repl without any issues. Pretty sure the slime directory needs to be on the load-path otherwise it doesn't work at all.

I'm using emacs 28.2 on MacOS.