Earlier this year at CodeCon 2004, it became evident to me that the lack of a source-only distribution for Vesta was a significant impediment to its acceptance. Though Vesta is free software, only binary kits have been available because Vesta is a build system that one uses instead of make, and is built using itself (which makes for a classic chicken-and-egg problem). We simply didn't have any other way to build it.
I decided at that time that it was important to put together make build instructions for Vesta. I would have liked to get it done six months ago, but as is the way of things, other work constrained me from having enough time to devote to it. However, there is finally a make-based source kit for Vesta available for download.