port install doesn't fetch

I am having problems installing readline 5.1.

I read somewhere to manually copy the 5.1 and patch files to
/opt/local/var/db/dports/distfiles/readline.

Unfortunately the readline-5.1.tar.gz file that I had had a different checksum.

So I deleted the files out of  /opt/local/var/db/dports/distfiles/readline.

Now ports still doesn't attempt to fetch the files, instead it
complains about  "Could not open file:".

Why is it not attempting to fetch the files?

Better yet - does anyone have any hints about installing readline?

My ultimate goal is to setup Ruby on Rails with the latest versions.

Thanks for any help or advice.....