Keeping going with an old system

[Chris Hastie]

I know the correct answer to this is 'upgrade', but for various reasons
this is not a realistic option for me in the short term.

I have a remotely located box running 6.2. I recently performed a
`portsnap fetch update` to update the ports tree, but any attempt to
build a port results in errors such as

Unknown modifier 'u'

Unknown modifier 'u'

"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.options.mk", line 259: Need an operator
"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.options.mk", line 266: Need an operator
Unknown modifier 'u'

"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.options.mk", line 271: Malformed conditional
(defined(WITH_NE:M)))
"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.options.mk", line 276: Malformed conditional
(defined(WITHOUT_NE:M)))
Variable OPTIONS_DEFAULT is recursive.

I presume this is because bsd.options.mk is no longer compatible with
some key part of my system - gmake perhaps? Is there any way I can work
around this to build / upgrade ports?

Cheers

Chris