[jlf]

I was lurking on #lisp for most of today and it seems to me you're being a bit oversensitive. You asked about packages at 14:23. Several people tried to figure out exactly what you were asking, including gigamonkey (the author of PCL!). At 14:26 rahul mentioned "asdf" which is probably what you are looking for. If you had at that point Googled 'asdf lisp' and felt lucky, you would have gone straight to this page: http://www.cliki.net/asdf , which contains a script to automatically generate packages as well as some other Windows-specific information that you were asking about. Otherwise, at 14:39 in the complete log, jamesjb pointed you to a tarball containing an example system. Not too shabby IMHO.

Incidentally, http://www.cliki.net/IRC mentions #cl-gardeners and #lispcafe as more novice-friendly than #lisp, though I've never been too troubled by my own experiences there as a newcomer to Lisp.

Lastly, you might want to check out http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=012679172708151972086%3Aeg1jtvm_dlk (hopefully the link did not break) -- it's a custom Google search that searches a set of 20 Common Lisp resources. It's pretty useful.

Good luck.

[palish]

Thanks for the awesome resources. I'm honored that the author of a book took the time to speak to me. If I was being oversensitive though, the average newcomer has no chance.