6.9 Undefining Variables

If you want to clear a variable, setting its value to empty is usually sufficient. Expanding such a variable will yield the same result (empty string) regardless of whether it was set or not. However, if you are using the flavor (see The flavor Function) and origin (see The origin Function) functions, there is a difference between a variable that was never set and a variable with an empty value. In such situations you may want to use the undefine directive to make a variable appear as if it was never set. For example:

foo := foo
bar = bar

undefine foo
undefine bar

$(info $(origin foo))
$(info $(flavor bar))

This example will print “undefined” for both variables.

If you want to undefine a command-line variable definition, you can use the override directive together with undefine, similar to how this is done for variable definitions:

override undefine CFLAGS