How do you force a makefile to rebuild a target?

I have a makefile that builds and then calls another makefile. Since this makefile calls more makefiles that does the work it doesn’t really change. Thus it keeps thinking the project is built and up to date.

dnetdev11 ~ # make
make: `release' is up to date.

How do I force the makefile to rebuild the target?

clean = $(MAKE) -f ~/xxx/xxx_compile.workspace.mak clean


build = svn up ~/xxx                                                       \
        $(clean)                                                                \
        ~/cbp2mak/cbp2mak -C ~/xxx ~/xxx/xxx_compile.workspace        \
        $(MAKE) -f ~/xxx/xxx_compile.workspace.mak $(1)                    \


release:
        $(build )

debug:
        $(build DEBUG=1)

clean:
        $(clean)

install:
        cp ~/xxx/source/xxx_utility/release/xxx_util /usr/local/bin
        cp ~/xxx/source/xxx_utility/release/xxxcore.so /usr/local/lib

Note: Names removed to protect the innocent

Final Fixed version:

clean = $(MAKE) -f xxx_compile.workspace.mak clean;


build = svn up;                                         \
        $(clean)                                        \
        ./cbp2mak/cbp2mak -C . xxx_compile.workspace;   \
        $(MAKE) -f xxx_compile.workspace.mak    $(1);   \


.PHONY: release debug clean install

release:
        $(call build,)

debug:
        $(call build,DEBUG=1)

clean:
        $(clean)

install:
        cp ./source/xxx_utillity/release/xxx_util /usr/bin
        cp ./dlls/Release/xxxcore.so /usr/lib