Well, here's some more details, but the timestamps look okay to me.
This is Red Hat Linux 7 on x64. The filesystem is XFS, which is apparently the default filesystem for this distribution.
I'm using GNU tar 1.26, and GNU make 3.82
Tar reports the timestamps in the tarball like this:
$ tar tvzf chicken-4.11.0.tar.gz |grep build-version
-rw-r--r-- sjamaan/sjamaan 3824 2016-05-28 07:49 chicken-4.11.0/build-version.c
-rw-r--r-- sjamaan/sjamaan 2262 2016-05-28 07:48 chicken-4.11.0/build-version.scm
So, the .scm file is older than the .c file, as reported by the tarball.
Indeed, the timestamps of the extracted files look just like this:
$ ls -l build-version.*
-rw-r--r--. 1 tgphelps tgphelps 3824 May 28 07:49 build-version.c
-rw-r--r--. 1 tgphelps tgphelps 2262 May 28 07:48 build-version.scm
And if I ask for detailed timestamps, it still looks okay:
$ ls -la --time-style=full-iso build-version*
-rw-r--r--. 1 tgphelps tgphelps 3824 2016-05-28 07:49:33.000000000 -0400 build-version.c
-rw-r--r--. 1 tgphelps tgphelps 2262 2016-05-28 07:48:08.000000000 -0400 build-version.scm
If I use the make options to show me WHY he's rebuilding things, it says the following about build-version.c:
Built for x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Reading makefiles...
Updating goal targets....
File `all' does not exist.
File `libchicken.a' does not exist.
File `build-version-static.o' does not exist.
File `identify-me' does not exist.
Must remake target `identify-me'.
Invoking recipe from rules.make:481 to update target `identify-me'.
Successfully remade target file `identify-me'.
Prerequisite `identify-me' of target `buildbranch' does not exist.
Must remake target `buildbranch'.
Successfully remade target file `buildbranch'.
Prerequisite `identify-me' of target `buildid' does not exist.
Must remake target `buildid'.
Successfully remade target file `buildid'.
Prerequisite `identify-me' of target `buildtag.h' does not exist.
Must remake target `buildtag.h'.
Successfully remade target file `buildtag.h'.
Prerequisite `buildid' is newer than target `build-version.c'.
Prerequisite `buildtag.h' is newer than target `build-version.c'.
Must remake target `build-version.c'.
Invoking recipe from rules.make:561 to update target `build-version.c'.
chicken build-version.scm -optimize-level 2 -include-path . -include-path ./ -inline -ignore-repository -feature chicken-bootstrap -no-warnings -specialize -types ./types.db -explicit-use -no-trace -output-file build-version.c
Prerequisite `buildid' is newer than target `build-version.c'.
Prerequisite `buildtag.h' is newer than target `build-version.c'.