cfssl sign remote fails parsing the remote parameter

cfssl sign -remote "127.0.0.1:8888" -loglevel=0 -profile "CA" client.csr | cfssljson -bare my-client
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] validating configuration
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] validate local profile
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] profile is valid
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] validating configuration
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] validate local profile
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [DEBUG] profile is valid
2019/01/08 12:20:26 [ERROR] bad url: parse 127.0.0.1:8888: first path segment in URL cannot contain colon
{"code":5300,"message":"failed to connect to remote"}
Failed to parse input: unexpected end of JSON input

Reproduce the failure with the documented cfssl sign command using -remote 127.0.0.1:8888, then trace the sign command's remote-parameter parsing from that entry point. Done means a host and port in this form are accepted and the remote signing command no longer reports a bad URL or failed connection solely because of parsing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.