Am I an idiot?

[Paul McGarry <mcgarry tig com au>]

After extracting the garnome 0.8.6 tarball, cd-ing to
meta/gnome-desktop/
and doing a make install (or make fetch) I simply get:
=====
[paulm beefcake gnome-desktop]$ make
mkdir download
/bin/sh: DISTFILES: command not found
 ==> Grabbing download/$
*** GAR GAR GAR!  Failed to download download/$!  GAR GAR GAR! ***
make: *** [download/$(DISTFILES)] Error 1
[paulm beefcake gnome-desktop]$
=====

What (excruciatingly simple) thing am I missing?

--
Paul McGarry