diff --git a/pkgs/development/libraries/java/xalanj/default.nix b/pkgs/development/libraries/java/xalanj/default.nix
index eb09b6a80a18..28fb0eff011c 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/libraries/java/xalanj/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/libraries/java/xalanj/default.nix
@@ -1,14 +1,57 @@
-{stdenv, fetchurl}:
+{ fetchurl, stdenv, ant, javac, jvm, xerces }:
 
-/*
-This is a binary package containing the jars... yuck!
-*/
-stdenv.mkDerivation {
-  name = "xalanj-2.7.0";
-  directory = "xalan-j_2_7_0";
-  src = fetchurl {
-    url = http://apache.cs.uu.nl/dist/xml/xalan-j/xalan-j_2_7_0-bin-2jars.tar.gz;
-    md5 = "4d7b03dcaf2484b5f9685cc4309a9910";
-  };
-  builder = ./builder.sh;
-}
+let
+  version = "2.7.1";
+  options = "-Dbuild.compiler=gcj";   # FIXME: We assume GCJ here.
+in
+  stdenv.mkDerivation {
+    name = "xerces-j-${version}";
+
+    src = fetchurl {
+      url = "mirror://apache/xml/xalan-j/source/xalan-j_2_7_1-src.tar.gz";
+      sha256 = "0hxhx0n0ynflq1d01sma658ipwn3f3902x6n8mfk70mqkdiallps";
+    };
+
+    buildInputs = [ ant javac jvm xerces ];
+
+    configurePhase =
+      '' rm -v lib/xerces*.jar
+         export CLASSPATH="${xerces}/lib/java"
+      '';
+
+    buildPhase = "ant ${options} jar";
+    doCheck    = false;
+
+    # FIXME: Install javadoc as well.
+    installPhase =
+      '' ensureDir "$out/lib/java"
+         cp -v build/x*.jar "$out/lib/java"
+      '';
+
+    meta = {
+      description = "Apache Xalan-Java, an XSLT processor";
+
+      longDescription =
+        '' Xalan-Java is an XSLT processor for transforming XML documents
+           into HTML, text, or other XML document types.  It implements XSL
+           Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0 and XML Path Language (XPath)
+           Version 1.0 and can be used from the command line, in an applet or a
+           servlet, or as a module in other program.
+
+           Xalan-Java implements the javax.xml.transform interface in Java
+           API for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.3.  This interface provides a
+           modular framework and a standard API for performing XML
+           transformations, and utilizes system properties to determine which
+           Transformer and which XML parser to use.
+
+           Xalan-Java also implements the javax.xml.xpath interface in JAXP
+           1.3, which provides an object-model neutral API for evaluation of
+           XPath expressions and access to the evaluation environment.
+        '';
+
+      homepage = http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/;
+      license = "Apache-2.0";
+
+      maintainers = [ stdenv.lib.maintainers.ludo ];
+    };
+  }
diff --git a/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix b/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix
index af335c95ae0a..498a255253b2 100644
--- a/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix
+++ b/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix
@@ -4560,8 +4560,13 @@ let
     inherit (xlibs) libXtst;
   };
 
-  xalanj = import ../development/libraries/java/xalanj {
-    inherit stdenv fetchurl;
+  xalanj = xalanJava;
+  xalanJava = import ../development/libraries/java/xalanj {
+    inherit fetchurl stdenv;
+    ant    = apacheAntGcj;  # for bootstrap purposes
+    javac  = gcj;
+    jvm    = gcj;
+    xerces = xercesJava;
   };
 
   zziplib = import ../development/libraries/zziplib {