Do I always have to wait for freebsd to make a port
for a certain application (that there might be somewhat
special process involve) or is it possible for me to
compile it from its sources by myself?
With time and skilled effort, it's possible to compile any application from sources yourself.
People who possess the appropriate knowledge may create instructions for how to build the software on FreeBSD without errors. This is what ports are, a set of Makefiles (and patches where needed) which make it easy and convenient for normal users to compile software for themselves, and also enable building precompiled packages.
For example, I am looking for kaffeine and as its
dependency, it says I will have to install xinelib
first so I downloaded its latest sources from their
main website xinehq.de(failing from retrieving it
first from freebsd.org/ports), but then, same as with
most of the applications that I have compiled from
their sources, it stops in the middle of "make" and I
always end up just installing a precompiled package in
.tgz format("sort of better luck next time: no package
available for xinelib")
If you take a look at /usr/ports/multimedia/libxine, you will see exactly what is needed to build xinelib under FreeBSD. In particular, there are about a dozen changes to the source code under libxine/files which are needed for the software to compile and run under FreeBSD.
That's somewhat unusual, and generally implies that libxine was not written very well or very portably. Good software requires zero changes to run on a different platform, but multimedia software tends to be finicky.
I really want to know what processess, or
pointers(ex;tools, environment variables and so on and
so forth.) should I consider when compiling from the
sources.
Well, it obviously helps to be able to write and debug code. If you are reasonably competent as a software developer, the next step would be to read the Porter's Handbook at:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook
If you aren't a developer, your best bet is probably to use the ports or precompiled packages for now, and learn about coding by writing your own programs until you know enough to be able to understand and change/fix other people's code.
-- -Chuck
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