Complex projects usually require to set up project specific development environment where startup script like .cshrc 
will not help.
Remote development makefile allows to specify some pre-build steps but when main makefile is executed it appears that 
all environment that was set up in pre- build step is lost. Modifying of 'build command' does not help:
e.g. following command does not work:
/home/iutkin/env/development_config.sh && ${MAKE} -f makefile debug 

I tried to workaround it including following line in my makefile:
 ABC:sh=<my script>
but it does not work as well

Can we have a pre-build step (like in Magic C++) that will run under same session so that environment can be inherited?

The server I work on is Solaris box with csh as default shell. Unfortunately it is not possible to change the default 
shell (company policy etc)