Action as a prerequisite

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I have a number of sources that I wish to compile into executables. 
They can all be processed as:


file1: file1.o
        $(CXX) -o $@ $(STUFF) $<


I tried to automate this for files 1-9 by:


EXEC_SRCS := file1.cc file2.cc file3.cc ... file9.cc
EXECS := $(EXEC_SRCS:.cc=)

$(EXECS): $(addsuffix .o,$@)
        $(CXX) -o $@ $(STUFF) $<


Make won't let me use an action as a prerequisite.  As a test I tried:


$(EXECS): $(addsuffix .o,$@)
        @echo TEST $@
        @echo TEST $(addsuffix .o,$@)
        @echo TEST $<


and when I "make file1" I get


TEST file1
TEST file1.o
TEST


Why doesn't this work?  Is there a way to automate a list of files like 
this?  I understand I could probably give all the executable files an 
extension like .t and then use a pattern substitution to process them 
all.  Any way to do this without a special extension?

-
natch