What i can recommend you if you do not want to go through this hassle is use prebuild packages.
Take a look at pkg_add -r option and if you feel you need a man page go to http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi that should save you from your linuxism ;) of using –help which in the BSD world is just -h (as help) :S.
Anyway good to hear you weren't disappointed and stayed in the ship.
Just some thought to just let people know how to avoid some headaches, same as your post.
Regards.