There are currently three versions of Clozure CL that you might want to use (and therefore might want to build from source):

All versions are available for download from the Clozure CL website in the form of archives that contain everything you need to work with Clozure CL, including the complete sources, a full heap image, and the foreign-function interface database.

Version 1.0 archives are named openmcl-platform-all-1.0.tar.gz, where platform is either darwinppc, darwinppc64, or linuxppc. Because version 1.0 is no longer undergoing active development, you won't ever need to update these sources.

Version 1.1 archives are named openmcl-platform-snapshot-yymmdd.tar.gz, where platform is either darwinppc, darwinx8664, linuxppc, linuxx8664, or freebsdx8664, and where yymmdd is the year, month, and day the snapshot was released.

Because version 1.1 is undergoing active development, there may be times when you want to get sources that are more recent than the most recent snapshot and use them to build yourself a new bleeding-edge Clozure CL. In that case, you should download and install the latest snapshot, and then update your sources via CVS. At that point you can rebuild and you'll have the latest and greatest Clozure CL. The snapshot has CVS working-copy information in it, so all you need to do to update is

$ cd ccl
$ cvs login             # password is "cvs"
# this step only needs to be done once,
# that'll store the trivially encrypted
# password in ~/.cvspas
$ cvs update
    

Unless you tell it to, cvs won't delete ("prune") empty directories or create new ones when the repository changes. It's generally a good habit to use

$ cvs update -d -P      # create dirs as needed, prune empty ones
    

Version 1.2 archives follow naming conventions that are similar to those used by 1.0 (though more platforms are supported.) However, rather than containing CVS working-copy information, the 1.2 (and, presumably, later) archives contain metainformation used by the Subversion (svn) source-code control system.

Subversion client programs are pre-installed on OSX 10.5 and later and are typically either pre-installed or readily available on Linux and FreeBSD platforms. The Subversion web page contains links to subversion client programs for many platforms; users of OSX versions 10.4 and earlier can also install Subversion clients via Fink or MacPorts.