to compile, there are programs needed. The link to getting gettext does nothing (Though this is really something that should be braught up with those guys, as it is in their site), and, yes, the wiki is kind of confusing. It mentions some things, like fink, but does nothing to tell you what it is should you decide that you want to try using it. The SVN download links do nothing, aswell (When you click the green button saying "Download", it says you should first read the release notes, but does nothing)
No, I dont understand the whole trunk, tags, branches subversion thing. All I wanted to do was try some submitted patches.
Oh, and on the beta site, there arent any MAC installers. I understand that it will take some time to port them into MAC, as Windows/Linux is probably the native OS, but having a MAC installer for the beta game will go a ways to getting rid of bugs for the MAC when it goes out of beta