So, to effectively use TM, I need to deal with svn and perl issues?
I'm probably shopping at the wrong store. I wanted a productive text editor that works with the applications I DO use, without messing with configuring and troubleshooting a bunch of stuff I don't.
One of the great things of TextMate is the neat integration of all those unix commands. OSX comes shipped with perl, python, ruby, php - you name it. Plus of course all those little utilities that make Unix more than just a kernel - grep, awk, wc… and far more. With TextMate you can use them, combine then and do a lot of stuff that simply can't be done in other editors. If something does not work the way you expect it - here is the right place to ask (or in the IRC channel). But it should pretty much work out-of-the box (except if you broke it in some way).
A default set of bundles is included in every TextMate release. For special things or bundles under development, there is the svn archive. This is bleeding edge, under development or special interest. You don't HAVE to use it, to work with TextMate. The next release will always (mostly) update the standard set of bundles.
In fact, there are people using TextMate who never even opened the Bundle Editor and still find it a great Editor.
Soryu.