Most users will not need to build aXSL, but should simply use the latest distribution. However, there are at least two situations in which you may wish to build aXSL from source. The first is to obtain access to changes made since the last distribution. The second is when you are trying to build an application which has unreleased changes and which is dependent on aXSL. FOray, for example, maintains its repository code in conformity with aXSL's repository, even between releases. Successfully building FOray when it has unreleased changes will probably require building aXSL with its unreleased changes as well.
An Ant build.xml file is provided in the scripts directory. Run the "distribution" target to build the standard distribution, which will then be located in build/ant/distribution.
The "lib" directory of the distribution contains an "all" subdirectory and a "modules" subdirectory. The sum of the content of the jar files in these two directories is identical, so you need only use one or the other. If you use all or most of aXSL, using "all" is probably cleaner, and reduces the number of jar files in your distribution. If you use only a subset of the aXSL modules, choosing only those module jar files that you need reduces the size of your distribution. To use the individual jar files successfully, you will need to understand the dependencies between the modules.