Sincerity is a tool for installing and bootstrapping software stacks on top of the JVM. It makes these otherwise tedious tasks easy, simple and fun.

Please see the [Sincerity web site] (http://threecrickets.com/sincerity/) for for comprehensive documentation. Here we will only explain how to build it.

All you need to build Sincerity is [Ant] (http://ant.apache.org/).

Simply change to the "/build/" directory and run "ant".

During the build process, build and distribution dependencies will be downloaded from an online repository at http://repository.threecrickets.com/, so you will need Internet access.

The result of the build will go into the "/build/distribution/" directory. Temporary files used during the build process will go into "/build/cache/", which you are free to delete.

The "/build/custom.properties" file contains configurable settings, along with some commentary on what they are used for. You are free to edit that file, however to avoid git conflicts, it would be better to create your own "/build/private.properties" instead, in which you can override any of the settings. That file will be ignored by git.

To avoid the "bootstrap class path not set" warning during compilation (harmless), configure the "compile.boot" setting in "private.properties" to the location of an "rt.jar" file belonging to JVM version 7.

To build the manual, as part of the standard build process, you will need to install LyX and eLyXer, and configure their paths in "private.properties".

You will need to install [Eclipse] (http://www.eclipse.org/) and configure its path in "private.properties".

You can create distribution packages (zip, deb, rpm, IzPack) using the appropriate "package-" Ant targets. They will go into the "/build/distribution/" directory.

If you wish to sign the deb and rpm packages, you need to install the "dpkg-sig" and "rpm" tools, and configure their paths and your keys in "private.properties".

In order to build the platform installers (for Windows and OS X), you will need to install [InstallBuilder] (http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/) and configure its path in "private.properties".

BitRock has generously provided the Sincerity project with a free license, available under "/build/installbuilder/license.xml". It will automatically be used by the build process.

You do not need Maven to build Sincerity, however you can deploy your build to a Maven repository using the "deploy-maven" Ant target. To enable this, you must install [Maven] (http://maven.apache.org/) and configure its path in "private.properties".

Join the [Sincerity Community] (http://groups.google.com/group/sincerity-community), and tell us where you're stuck! We're very happy to help newcomers get up and running.