Yes, there's a note about that in README-CVS:
Note about the depend target: Dependencies are typically between *.c files and the *.h files they include. Since many *.c files are generated from other input, the depend target often trigs other targets to generate them. Some of those targets use the pike binary in the build tree, so if you do make depend before pike is first built in a new build tree, you're likely to end up building everything. That can seem like a bit of catch 22, but since the dependency files are only needed to correctly rebuild in an old tree, it's perfectly ok to wait with make depend until you have built Pike once.
/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS
Previous text:
2003-01-03 23:01: Subject: depend
depend: $(SRC_TARGETS) $(TPIKE_TARGETS)
Should a pike really have to be built to generate the dependencies needed for building the pike that is needed to generate the dep...?
/ Mirar