When is Commerce deleting vs archiving products?

Commerce
#1

Whenever I remove a product from within the Commerce Manager Dashboard, it states that it won’t actually delete it but will archive it (by setting removed to 1). When I actually check the database though, the product is completely gone.

I’m assuming, as long as Commerce is in Test Mode, products will actually be deleted and this will change as soon as I enter Live Mode?

Also what are the main reasons to keep products in the archive? I’m guessing mainly so past orders can be linked to the products even if they get removed afterwards? Is there anything else?

I’m mainly asking here as I can set products to be removed from my import script and I’m debating wheter I should also just soft remove them or delete them entirely.

#2

Huh, that is not supposed to happen. The idea there is to make it impossible to delete certain data from the dashboard. Products are quite central to things, so making sure those aren’t permanently removed helps keep other data and reporting useful.

We’ll need to look into what’s going on there, though.

#3

Okay, interesting. I actually thought of this as a nice feature as I think it’s quite useful for products to be deleted completely (if intentionally done during test mode when no order has ever been placed).

So is this just on my install or can you reproduce this?