staging without root privileges

[Anton Shterenlikht]

https://wiki.freebsd.org/ports/StageDir
says 

Make sure you tested make package as a normal user (not root).

Does this refer specifically to the package target?
Or to all targets up to and including package?

I'm asked for root passwd on make config,
and then I get an error on build:

mkdir: /usr/ports/devel/robodoc/work: Permission denied

which makes sense.

So do I understand correctly that only package
target is intended to be built without the
root UID?

Anton