Staging without /usr/ports/packages/

[Lena at lena.kiev.ua]

FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE-p4 i386, ports tree freshly updated with portsnap,
not pkgng, nothing about directories in make.conf,
the /usr/ports/packages/ directory deleted (in order to not waste disk space) -
that worked until today. Now:

===>  Building package for libiconv-1.14_3
Creating package /usr/ports/converters/libiconv/work/pkg/libiconv-1.14_3.tbz
Registering depends:.
Creating bzip'd tar ball in '/usr/ports/converters/libiconv/work/pkg/libiconv-1.14_3.tbz'
===>  Installing for libiconv-1.14_3
pkg_add: can't stat package file '/usr/ports/converters/libiconv/libiconv-1.14_3.tbz'
*** Error code 1

Same problem today with another update (ruby).
I recreated the /usr/ports/packages/ directory, now update successful:

===>  Building package for libiconv-1.14_3
Creating package /usr/ports/converters/libiconv/work/pkg/libiconv-1.14_3.tbz
Registering depends:.
Creating bzip'd tar ball in '/usr/ports/converters/libiconv/work/pkg/libiconv-1.14_3.tbz'
===>  Installing for libiconv-1.14_3
pkg_install EOL is scheduled for 2014-09-01. Please consider migrating to pkgng
http://blogs.freebsdish.org/portmgr/2014/02/03/time-to-bid-farewell-to-the-old-pkg_-tools/
===>  Cleaning for libiconv-1.14_3
--->  Cleaning out obsolete shared libraries
[Updating the pkgdb <format:bdb_btree> in /var/db/pkg ... - 608 packages found (-0 +1) . done]
~ #

But /usr/ports/packages/All/ now keeps a copy of every package I build from
ports. What for?  It wasn't obligatory until today. I think that it's a
fresh bug (no /work/pkg/ in path).