I have a fairly self-contained scenario where I load quicklisp as a dependency of another project (to use ql-dist et al).

My process is the following:

• Load quicklisp in a local folder
• Load all the dependencies of my system in the local quicklisp folder
• Run buildapp by pointing to my local quicklisp folder

When using this way, if my system depends on quicklisp, I'll get this error when running buildapp:

Fatal UNDEFINED-FUNCTION:
  The function QL-SETUP:QMERGE is undefined.

I think quicklisp shouldn't depend on the setup.lisp file being loaded.