Do I have correct impression if I assume $MACHINE_ARCH is not
   translated when it's in PLIST-mi file (there shouldn't be any need for
   this, I think)?

   Relevant parts of package building & installing process is attached to
   the end of this message, maybe someone can provide a patch for this?

   ===>  Building package for perl-5.00404
   tar: can't add file lib/perl5/${MACHINE_ARCH}-netbsd/5.00404/CORE/EXTERN.h : No such file or directory

The problem is that ${MACHINE_ARCH} isn't handled right for any PLIST
file.  I just sent a patch to Alistair Cooke to fix this and provide
some other enhancements.  Don't know when it will be incorporated, but
the part for this problem follows.

Cheers,
Brook

===========================================================================
--- bsd.port.mk.orig	Fri Feb  6 07:51:33 1998
+++ bsd.port.mk	Fri Feb  6 07:53:40 1998
@@ -1840,6 +1840,7 @@
 #    (we don't regard MANCOMPRESSED as many ports seem to have .gz pages in
 #     PLIST even when they install manpages without compressing them)
 #  - substituting machine architecture (uname -m) for <$ARCH>
+#  - substituting machine architecture (sysctl -n hw.machine_arch) for ${MACHINE_ARCH}
 .if !defined(PLIST_SRC)
 .if exists(${PKGDIR}/PLIST)
 PLIST_SRC=	${PKGDIR}/PLIST
@@ -1870,6 +1871,7 @@
 			-e '/man\/man.*[^g][^z]$$/s/$$/.gz/g' \
 			-e '/man\/cat.*[^g][^z]$$/s/$$/.gz/g' \
 			-e 's/\<\$$ARCH\>/'${ARCH}'/g' \
+			-e 's/\$${MACHINE_ARCH}/'${MACHINE_ARCH}'/g' \
 			>${PLIST} ; \
 	fi
 .else   # !MANZ
@@ -1878,6 +1880,7 @@
 			-e '/man\/man/s/\.gz$$//g' \
 			-e '/man\/cat/s/\.gz$$//g' \
 			-e 's/\<\$$ARCH\>/'${ARCH}'/g' \
+			-e 's/\$${MACHINE_ARCH}/'${MACHINE_ARCH}'/g' \
 			>${PLIST} ; \
 	fi
 .endif  # MANZ