Most versions of Make will assume they must therefore recompile all the source files that use the header file; but GNU Make gives you a way to avoid the recompilation, in the case where you know your change to the header file does not require it.
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If some other rule is not depended on by the goal (or anything it depends on, etc.), that rule is not processed, unless you tell make to do so (with a command such as make clean). Before recompiling an object file, make considers updating its prerequisites, the source file and header files.
This file documents the GNU make utility, which determines automatically which pieces of a large program need to be recompiled, and issues the commands to recompile them.
This variable is only needed if you’d like to set GNU make -specific flags in a POSIX-compliant makefile. This variable will be seen by GNU make and ignored by other make implementations.