See for setup instructions for the stable version of sbt. To build from source, get the latest stable version of sbt (above) and get the code: $ git clone git://github.com/harrah/xsbt.git $ cd xsbt The latest tag for 0.9.x is 0.9.1: $ git checkout v0.9.1 Or, get the development branch for 0.9.x: $ git checkout 0.9 To build: $ sbt update "project Launcher" proguard "project Simple Build Tool" "publish-local" Copy your stable ~/bin/sbt script to ~/bin/xsbt and change it to use the launcher at: /target/sbt-launch-0.9.1.jar If using the 0.9 development branch, the launcher is at: /target/sbt-launch-0.9.2-SNAPSHOT.jar