Adding `--no-sysinit` suppressed the message and allowed make to proceed.

The build then hangs on not finding lfp.h header file (which is part of libfixposix which is in FreeBSD pkg repo but without the header files.

    <...>/common-lisp/nyxt/_build/iolib/src/syscalls/ffi-types-unix__grovel.c:6:10: fatal error: 'lfp.h' file not found
    #include <lfp.h>
             ^~~~~~~
    1 error generated.

It's been too long, can I just download the header(s) and put them somewhere (where the compiler will find them)?

- - - -

FWIW, at the start of sbcl compiling Nyxt this warning is printed:

> WARNING: You are using ASDF version 3.3.1 (probably from (require "asdf") or loaded by quicklisp) and have an older version of ASDF (and older than 2.27 at that) registered at #P"/usr/local/lib/common-lisp/asdf/asdf.asd". Having an ASDF installed and registered is the normal way of configuring ASDF to upgrade itself, and having an old version registered is a configuration error. ASDF will ignore this configured system rather than downgrade itself. In the future, you may want to either: (a) upgrade this configured ASDF to a newer version, (b) install a newer ASDF and register it in front of the former in your configuration, or (c) uninstall or unregister this and any other old version of ASDF from your configuration. Note that the older ASDF might be registered implicitly through configuration inherited from your system installation, in which case you might have to specify :ignore-inherited-configuration in your in your ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf or other source-registry configuration file, environment variable or lisp parameter. Indeed, a likely offender is an obsolete version of the cl-asdf debian or ubuntu package, that you might want to upgrade (if a recent enough version is available) or else remove altogether (since most implementations ship with a recent asdf); if you lack the system administration rights to upgrade or remove this package, then you might indeed want to either install and register a more recent version, or use :ignore-inherited-configuration to avoid registering the old one. Please consult ASDF documentation and/or experts.

But when I look in /usr/local/lib/common-lisp/asdf/asdf.asd it has:

    (defsystem "asdf"
      :author ("Daniel Barlow")
      :maintainer ("Robert Goldman")
      :licence "MIT"
      :description "Another System Definition Facility"
      :long-description "ASDF builds Common Lisp software organized into defined systems."
      :version "3.3.4.7" ;; to be automatically updated by make bump-version
      ...

So I don't know why it thinks there's "an older version of ASDF (and older than 2.27 at that)" registered there, nor why it thinks I'm using 3.3.1.