Several ongoing FreeBSD port issues, most not urgent

[jb_daefo]

I've posted most of these problems, to the FreeBSD lists, but am delaying reposting there until I've a longer list and can format it properly to the FreeBSD users and developers, since most of the problems are non-showstoppers.

Posting here in case anyone has a clue...

a... docbook ports consistently fail to build
despite reinstalls
[gtk-doc]
Could not find DocBook XML DTD V4.3 in XML catalog [despite seven *docbook* ports being installed and per UPDATING]

b... perl currently does not build... and neither any perl port. CLI perl ports and GUI perl ports fail [ this is a recent time waster here]
[p5-AnyEvent]
Invalid version format (non-numeric data) at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm line 6
[ rebuilding p5-ExtUtils-MakeMaker, same error]
[ running any CLI perl program, same error, AFAIK ]

c...
portupgrade -a -n fails upon any error in a Makefile
portmaster --check-depends exits silently
pkgdb -F "packages not supported yet"

These three commands were once mainstays of keeping the installed ports
trouble-free...

Thankfully the pkg system and shell scripts and pipes have workarounds for the problems here. So there's that.

Thanks for reading.