Each distribution of ivy contains samples. The documentation is packaged separately due to its size. It corresponds to a snapshot of the online documentation at the time of the release. Prefer the site itself if you want to have an updated and commented version of the documentation. With each version of ivy, you can find: <h2>binary distribution</h2> Containing ivy jars, dependencies and samples. This is the recommended version if you just want to use ivy. It requires at least a jre 1.4+ to run, and it is recommended to use it from ant (1.5.1+, 1.6.2+ recommended). <h2>sources</h2> Ready to be build with ant 1.6.0 or greater and ... ivy 1.4-RC1+. Yes, ivy eats its own dog food, and needs a binary version of itself to be build. Note that you will also need to have an internet access during build in order to ivy to download dependencies from ibiblio. This is the recommended version if you want to build ivy yourself and see it in action at the same time. <i>Note:</i> version 1.6.0 of ant is required here because the build file use its namespace feature to import ivy tasks. <h2>documentation</h2> Full ivy documentation easily browsable offline, packaged as a zip.