Building www/chromium [fake-pkg] Error code 1

[bob prohaska]

When trying to compile www/chromium on an 8GB Pi4 using
make -j4 -DBATCH MAKE_JOBS_UNSAFE=yes DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes > make.log &

the process stopped with
===>   Registering installation for bash-5.1.4_1 as automatic
pkg-static: open(/home/bob/freebsd-ports/shells/bash/work/.metadir): No such file or directory
*** [fake-pkg] Error code 1

This is the first time I've tried placing ports outside /usr/ports and
the first time having the ports tree owned by a regular user. 

Is that a likely culprit? FWIW, the ports tree was pulled via git this morning.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska