ql-dist:install-dist

(ql-dist:install-dist name-or-url &rest options)

Installs a Quicklisp-format distribution beside the Quicklisp dist that ql:quickload downloads from. The argument is a known dist name — "quicklisp" or "ultralisp" — or the URL of a distinfo ("http://dist.ultralisp.org/", the URL Ultralisp itself tells you to install, serves its distinfo directly). The return value is the installed dist's name as a string; installing the same dist twice is a no-op. Keyword options (:prompt nil, ...) are accepted and ignored — nothing here prompts before downloading.

Only Quicklisp is installed by default, so Ultralisp is opt-in: this call, or the CLI --dist option / the RONTOLISP_DISTS environment variable for invocations with nowhere to put a form. The dists are searched in the order they were installed, per system: ql:quickload takes each system (and each dependency) from the first dist that lists it, so an added dist supplies the names Quicklisp does not have without changing where anything else comes from. A dist's indexes are downloaded only when a lookup actually reaches it. Each dist caches under ~/.rontolisp/<dist>/ (RONTOLISP_DIST_HOME overrides the base; RONTOLISP_QUICKLISP_HOME still overrides the quicklisp one).

Like ql:quickload, it takes effect at interpret time or compile time (on the Java side, not inside the compiled program). On the compile path (JVM/WASM) a literal, top-level call configures the dists the quickload forms below it download from while the program is being spliced, and is then consumed; a call nested inside another form, or with a computed argument, is a compile error. On the interpreter it is an ordinary runtime function, so a computed URL works.

$ rontolisp
CL-USER> (ql-dist:install-dist "http://dist.ultralisp.org/" :prompt nil)
"ultralisp"
CL-USER> (ql:quickload "split-sequence")
(split-sequence)

See the Systems guide for the search order, the cache layout and ql:update-dist, which refreshes a dist's index.