diff --git a/fetch.xml b/fetch.xml
index 4de21edd3..f2cd488d9 100644
--- a/fetch.xml
+++ b/fetch.xml
@@ -63,12 +63,10 @@
   <import file="get-m2.xml" />
 
   <target name="pick-dest">
+    <property name="dest" value="system" />
     <condition property="dest.dir"
       value="${lib.dir}">
-      <or>
-        <equals arg1="${dest}" arg2="system" />
-        <not><isset property="dest"/></not>
-      </or>
+      <equals arg1="${dest}" arg2="system" />
     </condition>
     <condition property="dest.dir"
       value="${optional.dir}">
@@ -92,7 +90,7 @@
       <attribute name="archive" default="@{project}"/>
       <sequential>
         <fail>
-        Unknown archive @{archive}
+        Unknown archive @{archive} -no property @{archive}.version defined.
           <condition>
             <not>
             <isset property="@{archive}.version"/>
@@ -143,6 +141,21 @@
     <f2 project="xml-resolver" />
   </target>
 
+  <!--
+   This is not used as
+   1. we want the names of the libraries to be fixed, or it will break  Ant's manifest.
+   2. We like to get the more recent artifacts than are in the repo at the time of writing (2006-10-16)
+   3. Xerces has a dependency on v 1.3.03 of Xml-apis, which is wrong.
+   If/when the artifacts stabilize, we could switch to it.
+   -->
+
+  <target name="xerces"
+      description="load an updated version of Xerces"
+      depends="init">
+    <f2 project="xerces" archive="xercesImpl"/>
+    <f2 project="xerces" archive="xmlParserAPIs" />
+  </target>
+
   <target name="networking"
     description="load networking libraries (commons-net; jsch)"
     depends="init">
diff --git a/lib/libraries.properties b/lib/libraries.properties
index f07e5cb04..e65bed899 100644
--- a/lib/libraries.properties
+++ b/lib/libraries.properties
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ m2.sha1.checksum=4e7ddfdb91600e9b59bb965ff8eef2f06015df50
 #when a specific dependency forces them to be out-of-order
 antlr.version=2.7.2
 bcel.version=5.1
+#there is a version 2.4.0, which is what Ant is built against. It is just not yet in the repo
 bsf.version=2.3.0
 bsh.version=2.0b4
 bsh-core.version=${bsh.version}
@@ -32,7 +33,11 @@ log4j.version=1.2.13
 oro.version=2.0.8
 regexp.version=1.3
 which.version=1.0
-xerces.version=2.6.2
+xerces.version=2.8.1
+xercesImpl.version=${xerces.version}
+#should be in sync w/ xerces, but not in the maven repository
+#xmlParserAPIs.version=${xerces.version}
+xmlParserAPIs.version=2.6.1
 xalan.version=2.7.0
 xml-resolver.version=1.1
 
diff --git a/lib/xercesImpl.jar b/lib/xercesImpl.jar
index f0fb0e89b..3b351f6e2 100644
Binary files a/lib/xercesImpl.jar and b/lib/xercesImpl.jar differ
diff --git a/lib/xml-apis.jar b/lib/xml-apis.jar
index 8331d27f1..b338fb669 100644
Binary files a/lib/xml-apis.jar and b/lib/xml-apis.jar differ