The port was introduced as a dependency to textproc/fzf. As the fzf port has been reworked to fetch build dependencies on build time we don't need this port anymore. So feel free to retire it.
A commit references this bug: Author: riggs Date: Sat Nov 26 17:27:34 UTC 2016 New revision: 427179 URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/ports/427179 Log: Retire devel/go-shellwords Details: port had been introduced as a stop-gap solution to satisfy a build dependency to textproc/fzf. In the meantime, textproc/fzf has been reworked to satisfy the dependency. No other consumers for devel/go-shellwords are present in the ports tree at this point in time. PR: 214698 Submitted by: sascha@root-login.org (maintainer of devel/go-shellwords) Changes: head/MOVED head/devel/Makefile head/devel/go-shellwords/