I think I need a little help

Hello everyone,

I've recently tried to use Emacs 24.1.1 which is available from the 
repository of Linux Mint and I cannot get slime to run properly with it.

I'm using slime from github which I get with "git clone 
https://github.com/slime/slime.git"
and I'm using SBCL-1.1.18.

I tried using a very basic ".emacs" file by following the directions in 
the slime manual
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;;Latest slime installation
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/my-slime-sandbox/slime/")
(require 'slime-autoloads)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/sbcl" )
(setq slime-contribs '(slime-fancy)) ;;This fails to load properly
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The message I get in the emacs message when I try ALT-x slime window is:
define-slime-contrib: Symbol's value as variable is void: 
--cl---cl-var--11849--

I also ran the slime test suite using the same emacs with the following 
sequence of commands that I have in a bash script.
-------------------------------------------
cd ~/my-slime-sandbox/slime
make clean
make compile

#Run the test suite
make clean check
make check-fancy
-------------------------------------------

The output of the test is:

<snip>
Test readme-recipe condition:
     (ert-test-failed "Unexpected error running takeoff 
forms\n(void-variable --cl---cl-var--99749--)")
    FAILED   61/186  readme-recipe
<snip>
Test traditional-recipe condition:
     (ert-test-failed "Unexpected error running preflight 
forms\n(void-variable --cl---cl-var--99749--)")
    FAILED  183/186  traditional-recipe
<snip>
Ran 186 tests, 184 results as expected, 2 unexpected (2014-05-20 
17:41:21-0700)
1 expected failures

2 unexpected results:
    FAILED  readme-recipe
    FAILED  traditional-recipe

make: *** [check] Error 2
make -C contrib EMACS="emacs" LISP="sbcl" check-fancy
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/pfb/my-slime-sandbox/slime/contrib'
emacs -Q -L . -L .. --batch -f batch-byte-compile slime-sprof.el

In toplevel form:
slime-sprof.el:5:1:Error: Symbol's value as variable is void: 
--cl---cl-var--99749--
make[1]: *** [slime-sprof.elc] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/pfb/my-slime-sandbox/slime/contrib'
make: *** [check-fancy] Error 2

That's as much as I can tell you about my problem.

Paul Bowyer