Setting up a development environment is such a pain. In short, here is my final configs:

• Aquamacs emacs
• SLIME without SLDB mode
• clisp with debugger commands working
• quicklisp (lisp package manager)
  • asdf.lisp that ships with quicklisp (Bridge between lisp and SLIME)

I also tried many other combinations. For example, sbcl should be a faster alternative to clisp, but I can’t make its debugger work. sbcl also support better linking to slime and sldb, but sldb isn’t working well. Emacs 24 seems to be a better emacs environment because it has package manager built right into it. However, I tired emacs starter-kit and slime installation through its package manager, and it just don’t work. Any suggestions would be greatly welcome. ;)

Instructions

1. Download osx-gcc if you haven’t.
2. Install homebrew.
3. brew install clisp.
4. Setting up quicklisp.
   1. Download quicklisp.lisp
   2. clisp -i quicklisp.lisp
   3. [1]> (quicklisp-quickstart:install)
   4. [2]> (ql:add-to-init-file)
   5. [3]> (quit)
5. Download Aquamacs emacs
6. Install Aquamacs emacs SLIME plugin
7. cat '(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/clisp")' >> ~/.emacs

Then you can use trace, step and other debug utilities in emacs SLIME. Enjoy it!

Update

I found out how to enable STEP-MODE in sbcl form this post. In short, put this in your .sbclrc.

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(declaim (optimize (debug 3)))

and in your .emacs

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(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/sbcl")