CLCS

Package Inheritance

Packages can be built up in layers. From one point of view, a package is a single collection of mappings from strings into internal symbols and external symbols. However, some of these mappings might be established within the package itself, while other mappings are inherited from other packages via use-package. A symbol is said to be present in a package if the mapping is in the package itself and is not inherited from somewhere else.

There is no way to inherit the internal symbols of another package; to refer to an internal symbol using the Lisp reader, a package containing the symbol must be made to be the current package, a package prefix must be used, or the symbol must be imported into the current package.