diff --git a/BUILDING.txt b/BUILDING.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..5eb765aab9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/BUILDING.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+
+
+Jetty is built with maven >= 2.0.8
+
+Currently there is not eclipse maven repository and we are not yet
+cleared to make releases to the public maven repositories.  Thus in
+order to build jetty, you need to locally check out and build
+two modules used by the build system:
+
+  cd /my/work/directory
+  svn co http://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/rt/org.eclipse.jetty/jetty-parent/trunk/jetty-parent jetty-parent
+  cd jetty-parent
+  mvn install
+  cd ..
+  svn co svn+ssh://gwilkins@dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/rt/org.eclipse.jetty/jetty-toolchain/trunk jetty-toolchain
+  cd jetty-toolchain
+  mvn install
+  cd ..
+
+You can then build this project:
+
+  cd /my/work/directory/jetty-7
+  mvn install
+
+