[eatonphil]

Yep installing any major (and even some of the minor) Common Lisp implementation(s) is very straightforward.

Emacs is my regular editor so I do use it when coding lisp but I don't use any extensions other than syntax highlighting (so no REPL or SLIME).

I sort of get the desire to use the "one click installers" like portacle but in reality they don't add very much and now you're dependent on a third-party system with less support than the language itself. It does not make sense to say Common Lisp on Mac is broken because a third-party installer isn't great.