You do not need to explicitly load them, ASDF will do it for you. You do need to declare the dependencies though.

Here is an example (example.asd)

  (defsystem :example
    :name "Example"
    :description "Example."
    :author "foo@bar"
    :serial t
    :license "BSD"
    :version "1.0"
    :depends-on (:sxql :cl-ppcre :dexador :clss :plump)
    :components ((:file "packages")
                 (:file "file1")
                 (:file "file2")
                 (:file "file3")))

You don't need to specify .lisp extension for files. Your packages.lisp may be:

  (in-package #:cl-user)

  (defpackage #:example
    (:use #:cl #:sxql #:cl-ppcre)
    (:export #:*global-symbol*
             #:exported-function))

Then you can load your system through ASDF, including all its dependencies, like so:

  (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :example)

This assumes that example.asd is inside a directory that can be found in:

  asdf:*central-registry*

Ah, I see, thank you. So I'll have to "install" the script into the registry before being able to just "use" it? :(

The easiest way to do it is to create a .asd for your project and then symlink or copy your project into ~/quicklisp/local-projects (i.e. the folder "local-projects" in the same directory as setup.lisp). Then, either run (ql:register-local-projects) or restart lisp and then do (ql:quickload :my-project) to load it.

Hmm, that makes "just clone the repository and you're done" rather hard. I'll reconsider...

I added the list of packages to the README and I'll think about a good way to use ASDF without QL and/or usability loss later. Thank you though!