This plugin provides a completion source for the popular Emacs interactive auto-completion framework auto-complete.

Where slime provides it, pop-up documentation for completed symbols will be displayed.

First, ensure auto-complete and slime are installed: I recommend using packages from Marmalade or Melpa.

You'll need both auto-complete and slime to be enabled and working, so please consult the corresponding documentation is you have any trouble with this.

Next, install ac-slime. If you choose not to use the convenient package in Melpa and Marmalade, you'll need to add the directory containing ac-slime.el to your load-path, and then (require 'ac-slime).

ac-slime provides a couple of slime-specific completion sources, so auto-complete needs to be told to use them when slime-mode is active. To do this, put the following code in your emacs init file to

 (add-hook 'slime-mode-hook 'set-up-slime-ac)
 (add-hook 'slime-repl-mode-hook 'set-up-slime-ac)
 (eval-after-load "auto-complete"
   '(add-to-list 'ac-modes 'slime-repl-mode))

ac-slime should now automatically be enabled when you visit a buffer in which slime-mode is active and auto-complete is enabled. (The symbols "Slime" and "AC" should appear in the modeline.)

Simply trigger auto-completion, and completion candidates supplied by slime should be displayed, with the symbol l on the right hand side of the completion pop-up. After a short delay, popup documentation for the completed symbol should also be displayed.

ac-slime supports fuzzy completion -- see the comments in ac-slime.el for details. Note that to use fuzzy completion, you must install and require slime-fuzzy.el, which comes with the full Slime distro, but not the packaged version in Marmalade.