SheepIt Render Farm Client is an Open Source client for the distributed render farm SheepIt.
You need Java 1.7. OpenJDK and Oracle are both supported.
You also need ant.
To create the jar file, simply type ant in the project's root directory.
Once you have a jar file, you can view the usage by running:
java -jar bin/sheepit-client.jar --help
When you are doing development work, you can use a mirror of the main site specially made for demo/dev. The mirror is located at http://www-demo.sheepit-renderfarm.com, and you can use it by passing -server http://www-demo.sheepit-renderfarm.com to your invocation of the client.