can't bootstrap on SPARC solaris 10 or SXCE solaris 11

[The Dude <zenxyzzy%gmail.com@localhost>]

I've downloaded current pkgsrc and tried to bootstrap using both a fresh 
install of solaris 10 (5/08) and
a fresh install of SXCE nevada build 97 using both gcc and sun studio 12 
compilers, and the
builds fail in exactly the same way:
after building bmake and awk, etc,

===> Installing packages
===> running: (cd /usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/pkgtools/bootstrap-mk-files && 
/usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/bin/bmake  -DPKG_PRESERVE 
MAKECONF=/usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/mk.conf install)
/usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/bin/pdksh: 
/usr/pkg/sbin/audit-packages: not found
===> Skipping vulnerability checks.
WARNING: No /pkg-vulnerabilities file found.
WARNING: To fix run: `/usr/pkg/sbin/download-vulnerability-list'.
===> Installing dependencies for bootstrap-mk-files-20080808
===> Overriding tools for bootstrap-mk-files-20080808
===> Extracting for bootstrap-mk-files-20080808
===> Patching for bootstrap-mk-files-20080808
===> Creating toolchain wrappers for bootstrap-mk-files-20080808
/usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/bin/nawk: illegal field $(), name ""
input record number 1, file
source line number 1
*** Error code 2

Stop.
bmake: stopped in /usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/pkgtools/bootstrap-mk-files
*** Error code 1

Stop.
bmake: stopped in /usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/pkgtools/bootstrap-mk-files
===> exited with status 1
aborted.

i grunge around and find that in  
/usr/src/ports/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/wrk/pkgtools/bootstrap-mk-files/work/.wrapper/tmp, 

all the files are zero length, having been munged by a cute awk script 
that nominally is supposed to remove spaces and comments.
strangely enough, it uses the system nawk, even after having built an 
awk itself. how odd.

at this point, I give up.
(btw, the bootstrap process and toolchain wrappers are unbelievably 
obscure and baroque)