I built a binary, I run it on the server and I get:

;; Error while trying to load definition for system asdf from pathname
;; /home/vince/common-lisp/asdf/asdf.asd:
;; couldn't load #P"/home/vince/common-lisp/asdf/asdf.asd": file does not exist.

So yes, the common-lisp/ directory doesn’t exist.

How do I tell ASDF to shut up and do nothing?

A (uncomplete) solution with Deploy

I had found a workaround previously thanks to Shinmera, his Deploy project or was it when speaking about his Kandria game. This did it at the time:

;; project.asd
(deploy:define-hook (:deploy asdf) (directory)
  (declare (ignorable directory))
  #+asdf (asdf:clear-source-registry)
  #+asdf (defun asdf:upgrade-asdf () NIL))

However using those two lines in the .asd

#+asdf (asdf:clear-source-registry)
#+asdf (defun asdf:upgrade-asdf () nil)

isn’t enough and brings other errors:

There is no applicable method for the generic function
#<STANDARD-GENERIC-FUNCTION QL-DIST:INSTALLEDP (3)>
when called with arguments (NIL)

The Deploy hook has the same result in this case.

Investigation…

I still think ASDF shouldn’t fail and exit, but something (my code or a dependency) is asking it something unusual.

Create common-lisp/

$ mkdir common-lisp
$ ( cd ~/common-lisp/ && wget https://asdf.common-lisp.dev/archives/asdf-3.3.5.tar.gz  && tar -xvf asdf-3.3.5.tar.gz && mv asdf-3.3.5 asdf )

but now:

ASDF/PARSE-DEFSYSTEM:COMPUTE-COMPONENT-CHILDREN
already names an ordinary function or a macro.

I’m sure running from sources will work, but that wasn’t the goal either.