[SOLVED] Package lock error while installing SBCL CFFI package on Mac via Quicklisp

Package lock error while installing SBCL CFFI package on Mac via Quicklisp

I'm trying to use curses from Common Lisp, and the commonly-used cl-charms and croatoan libraries need cffi. In SBCL on a Mac, ql:quickload usually works fine... but installing cffi (either directly or as a dependency of one of the other libraries) fails:

(ql:quickload :cffi)

Gives me the REPL output:

; caught ERROR:
;   READ error during COMPILE-FILE:
;   
;     Lock on package SB-ALIEN violated when interning SHARED-OBJECT-FILE while in
;     package CFFI-SYS.

and stacktrace:

Error while trying to load definition for system cl-charms from pathname
/Users/jacobsen/quicklisp/dists/quicklisp/software/cl-charms-20181210-git/cl-charms.asd:
   COMPILE-FILE-ERROR while
   compiling #<CL-SOURCE-FILE "cffi" "src" "cffi-sbcl">
   [Condition of type ASDF/FIND-SYSTEM:LOAD-SYSTEM-DEFINITION-ERROR]

Restarts:
 0: [RETRY] Retry compiling #<CL-SOURCE-FILE "cffi" "src" "cffi-sbcl">.
 1: [ACCEPT] Continue, treating compiling #<CL-SOURCE-FILE "cffi" "src" "cffi-sbcl"> as having been successful.
 [...]
 --more--

Backtrace:
  0: ((FLET "H0" :IN ASDF/ACTION:PERFORM) #<UIOP/LISP-BUILD:COMPILE-FILE-ERROR {10039748F3}>)
  1: (SB-KERNEL::%SIGNAL #<UIOP/LISP-BUILD:COMPILE-FILE-ERROR {10039748F3}>)
  2: (ERROR UIOP/LISP-BUILD:COMPILE-FILE-ERROR :CONTEXT-FORMAT "~/asdf-action::format-action/" :CONTEXT-ARGUMENTS ((#<ASDF/LISP-ACTION:COMPILE-OP > . #<ASDF/LISP-ACTION:CL-SOURCE-FILE "cffi" "src" "cffi-sb..
  3: (UIOP/LISP-BUILD:CHECK-LISP-COMPILE-RESULTS NIL T T "~/asdf-action::format-action/" ((#<ASDF/LISP-ACTION:COMPILE-OP > . #<ASDF/LISP-ACTION:CL-SOURCE-FILE "cffi" "src" "cffi-sbcl">)))
  [...]
 --more--

This also is the case when I brew uninstall sbcl and install SBCL from source. My SBCL is the latest version (1.5.6).

What extra setup is needed to get SBCL working with libraries that require FFI?

Addendum/edit: it also fails in the same way using Roswell to install SBCL instead of straight-up Homebrew installation of SBCL.

Solution

I did an extensive cleaning of my Homebrew setup (following the advice in this answer on apple.stackexchange.com) and a fresh reinstall of sbcl and quicklisp. Loading cffi and cl-charms now works without error.