1. Added xandros repositories and updates.xepc.org repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list, set updates.xepc.org to have the same priority as the asus repository in /etc/apt/preferences
2. The version of git in those repos is too old, so also add backports.org to sources.list:
   deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free, then pin git-core in /etc/apt/preferences:

   Package: git-core
   
   Pin: release a=etch-backports
   
   Pin-Priority: 999

3. Install tools clbuild needs: sudo apt-get install darcs cvs subversion curl cogito git-core sbcl
4. Install clbuild: darcs get http://common-lisp.net/project/clbuild/clbuild
5. Make the script executable: chmod u+x clbuild/clbuild
6. Get a recent version of sbcl: ./clbuild/clbuild buildsbcl
7. Watch sbcl compiler output, speculate on what things like “(DEFINE-SOURCE-TRANSFORM LOGNOR ...)” might mean
8. Give up on waiting for the sbcl to finish compiling, spend 6 hours at Nathan’s house for dinner, beer, and Rock Band.
9. Get some basic libraries: ./clbuild/clbuild update --main-projects
10. Compile slime: ./clbuild/clbuild build slime
11. Load up emacs and slime to verify everything went smoothly: ./clbuild/clbuild slime

UPDATE: added bits about getting  a recent version of git installed, clbuild needs it for updating source directories after initial installation.  My repos installed 1.4.x, and that doesn’t seem to include git-config, nor set the remote.origin.url config value which clbuild depends on.  Once I got git 1.5.x, I downloaded the projects again, and now everything works fine. That took me approximately forever to figure out.

1. Download emacs
2. Add non-asus package repositories
3. sudo apt-get install build-essential
4. sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
5. sudo apt-get install xlibs-dev (if you want to emacs to use X)
6. unpack emacs tarball
7. ./configure
8. make (took about 6 minutes)
9. sudo make-install
10. go to sleep