Purge ARCHIVELOG automatically I have an Oracle 10g XE installation (exclusively used for development) which has accumulated so far 14 GB of files at ...\oraclexe\app\oracle\flash_recovery_area\XE\ARCHIVELOG. I do need that space and I'm tempted to just remove everything using Windows explorer but surely Oracle won't be amused.

Is it possible to configure Oracle XE to purge that stuff automatically as soon as it's no longer needed?
What does it mean "no longer needed"? Archive redologs have "only one" usage, they can be applied onto the last full/incremental database backup to recover the database.

So you either backup your development database and then you can delete them via RMAN during database backup. Or you do not backup your database and then you can run in NO ARCHIVELOG mode.