cm3 port fails to install immediately after the download, tar failure?

[Saj Goonatilleke]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2025, at 09:24, Kenneth Wolcott wrote:
>   I was curious about the port of the Modula-3 language...
> 
> port search cm3
> cm3 @5.2.6_1 (lang)
>     Critical Mass Modula-3 Compiler

read the port:
port cat cm3

# M3 requires a bootstrap compiler to build
# This port currently supports only Darwin/PPC

I don't think that port going to work on a contemporary Mac any more.
https://modula3.elegosoft.com/cm3/releng/#targets
The missing system.tgz file is the platform-specific bit that is not available for x86_64 (amd64) nor arm64.

Upstream development appears to have moved to GitHub.  Newer releases are available here.
https://github.com/modula3/cm3/releases/tag/d5.11.4
https://github.com/modula3/cm3/wiki/Getting-Started:-macOS

> This release introduces a new installer that supports a simple, source-based distribution containing a bootstrap compiler in C++.

I think this could be made to work now that the bootstrap compiler may itself be built from source.

There is no port maintainer for cm3 so you will probably need to fix this yourself. :)