Minor Description
Reported by Rob Casson:
indexing the example docs from 1.2, these steps work: curl http://localhost:8983/solr/update --data-binary '<delete><query>solr</query></delete>' -H 'Content-type:text/xml; charset=utf-8' curl http://localhost:8983/solr/update --data-binary '<optimize />' -H 'Content-type:text/xml; charset=utf-8' but if i reindex, and change the delete query to a negative, the non-'solr' docs don't get deleted: curl http://localhost:8983/solr/update --data-binary '<delete><query>-solr</query></delete>' -H 'Content-type:text/xml; charset=utf-8' curl http://localhost:8983/solr/update --data-binary '<optimize />' -H 'Content-type:text/xml; charset=utf-8' And detailed by Hoss with a workaround: the delete by query does "the right thing" with a purely negative query ... when the customization was added to Solr to support pure negative queries it was done at the SolrIndexSearcher level when computing DocSets, but delete by query uses a lower level method passing in a HitCOllector. the work arround is to include *:* in yoru query ... <delete><query>*:* -solr</query></delete> ... if/when this is fixed in Solr that's esentally what solr will do under the covers.