Deleting Files from an Organization

The package.xml file is a project manifest that lists all the components to retrieve or deploy. Although you can use package.xml to add components, it’s not sufficient to delete them. 
To delete files, create a delete manifest that’s called destructiveChanges.xml. The format of the delete manifest is the same as package.xml, except that wildcards aren’t supported

The following sample destructiveChanges.xml file names a single custom object to be deleted:

1	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

2	<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">

3

<types>

4	<members>MyCustomObject__c</members>

5	<name>CustomObject</name>

6

</types>

7	</Package>

To deploy the destructive changes, you must also have a package.xml file that lists no components to deploy, includes the API version, and is in the same directory as destructiveChanges.xml:

1	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

2	<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">

3	<version>38.0</version>

4	</Package>

• To bypass the Recycle Bin, set the purgeOnDelete option to true.
• If you try to delete some components that don’t exist in the organization, the rest of the deletions are still attempted.