Sometimes the need for deleting artifacts from the repository arises. For example, if an artifact was deployed by accident to the repository or the artifact has already been released but an old snapshot version is still available. In Archiva, there are different ways of deleting artifacts from the repository—through WebDAV, via the web application, through the scheduled repository purging, or by directly deleting it in the file system.
Note
It is not recommended that artifacts be deleted directly from the file system. Not only does it require access to the server itself, it is also prone to error. Artifacts that should not be deleted could be deleted by mistake. In case you still want to directly delete an artifact from the file system, all files related to the artifact such as metadata files and checksums must also be deleted. The repository must be scanned as well in order to update the metadata files. This can be done by clicking the Scan Repository...