wildcard dependency

[Warlich, Christof]

Hi,

I need to ensure that a certain tool is generated before any reciepes are 
executed for a certain extension. To better understand what I need, consider 
the following makefile:

xxx.ext:
    ./tool

xxx.ext: tool # This works as expected.
#$(wildcard *.ext: tool) # Why doesn't this cause "tool" to be made before 
xxx.j is made, as the line before does?
tool:
    echo touch xxx.ext > $@
    chmod 755 $@

Please consider that I have a few tousands of files, being handled in almost 
hundred sub-makefiles. Thus I don't want to add this dependency eveywhere.

Thanks for any ideas,

Christof