Version numbers not being compared correctly in ports?

[bob prohaska]

Got a strange error message while trying to compile firefox on an
RPI2:

===>  Installing for gettext-tools-0.19.8.1
===>  Checking if gettext-tools already installed
===>   gettext-tools-0.19.8.1 is already installed
      You may wish to ``make deinstall'' and install this port again
      by ``make reinstall'' to upgrade it properly.
      If you really wish to overwrite the old port of gettext-tools
      without deleting it first, set the variable "FORCE_PKG_REGISTER"
      in your environment or the "make install" command line.
*** Error code 1

It seems as if make is finding the version of gettext-tools it wants, 
why is it reporting an error? 

Just for fun, I cd'd to /usr/ports/devel/gettext-tools and
did the make deinstall/reinstall. No errors, but it didn't help.

svnlite info reports
Path: .
Working Copy Root Path: /usr/ports
URL: svn://svn.freebsd.org/ports/head
Relative URL: ^/head
Repository Root: svn://svn.freebsd.org/ports
Repository UUID: 35697150-7ecd-e111-bb59-0022644237b5
Revision: 454091
Node Kind: directory
Schedule: normal
Last Changed Author: ed
Last Changed Rev: 454091
Last Changed Date: 2017-11-12 14:13:47 -0800 (Sun, 12 Nov 2017)

Thanks for reading and any suggestions.

bob prohaska