It is unclear how to delete a menu block from the block administration pages

This is active??

Maybe the "configure" link could pull in the edit menu form too, so you don't have to go somewhere else to edit the menu while you're working in the Blocks page?

For edit that doesn't work, because then there would be now way to configure the block title or the block visibility. I don't know whether this whole thing is a good idea, it establishes a pattern that's not used anywhere in core. And letting contrib modules handle their own block deletion patterns could (possibly) open up a whole other can of worms.

Moving to 8.x

I feel that the real issue is that menu module shouldn't create a new block for every menu with no way to prevent that. There should be a per-menu setting on menus for whether there should be a corresponding block.

@ Jody Lynn
I totally agree

By default, Menu should not create any blocks unless the user specifically asks for it.
Now the block admin gui gets cluttered with unused blocks, which are irrelevant when people use things like menu_block, og_menu.

A simple "Create block for this menu" setting would suffice.

"Expose this menu as block" would be the appropriate wording.
I suggest it would be on by default for the standard menus, but off when creating a new menu.

Changed title as it seems more descriptive.

Just for the record, I am -1 on this. I think it is quite a nice feature to have, that the blocks are created automatically.
Unsubscribing.

Patch includes upgrade path but no new tests for this feature.

I defaulted all menus to have the 'expose as block' on, to be conservative. I think the main use for turning it off would be programmatic menu creation or developers outputting menus in other ways. Turning it off for 'primary links' in bartik would be a good idea though.

patch no longer applies:

tdm:d8 thedavidmeister$ git apply 33122-8.patch 
error: core/modules/menu/menu.admin.inc: No such file or directory
error: core/modules/menu/menu.install: No such file or directory
error: core/modules/menu/menu.module: No such file or directory
error: patch failed: core/modules/system/system.module:2107
error: core/modules/system/system.module: patch does not apply

If we're going to take this approach, can we get a bit more discussion around why you would want a menu that does not have a block. I don't think that "Contrib modules provide better menu blocks" is a strong use-case for Core providing this new functionality. Realistically, if the maintainers of those contrib modules were bothered by "duplicate" menu blocks in the system, they'd hide the Core blocks themselves as they present new ones.

Perhaps more concerning though is that this patch seems to miss the fundamental concern of the OP which is clearly:

When a new menu is created it auto generates a block item on the ?q=admin/block page.
This page doesn't make it clear what type of block this is, so some people might be confused about how to delete the block.

Changing the way a block is created originally does nothing to make the UI at admin/block clearer for block deletion.

May I suggest that a way forward could be to show more clearly in the blocks UI that a block is managed by the menu system?

Looks like this issue is fixed. A delete button has been added to the block administration page on a per block basis.