>  Can you try the patch below? I'm interested in the output of the
>  failing command, if it still occurs.

Interestingly, after applying the patch and re-running, nothing
changes: It appears that "fetch" isn't even being called!

It looks as if the problem isn't actually in the "fetch" script, then
- but in whatever *should* call it.

("fetch" isn't called when running "bmake" or "bmake fetch", either
normally or with PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL set)