ninja: error: remove(someDirectory) Permission denied. Windows

Created on 9 Oct 2014 · 6Comments · Source: ninja-build/ninja

After running "ninja -t clean" got "Permission denied" while deleting a folder.

MSDN describe stdio.h remove() as function for deleting files (not directories), on the other hand Linux man pages describe it as function for deleting files and folders. Could be a platform specific problem.

Calling _rmdir() (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wt8es881.aspx) do the trick.

bug windows

Source

agalapovs

👍3

Most helpful comment

CMakeLists.txt
Issue is still present in 1.7.2 on Windows & Linux.

I added a CMake project that will throw this error on ninja clean (i cant code ninja files).
Note: it works with Make or VS generators.

KUGA2 on 18 Jan 2017

👍3

All 6 comments

ghost on 1 May 2015

On linux directories are only removed when they're empty. Can the behaviour be changed to recursive removal? Or maybe give the buildscript an opportunity to do clean up before -t clean tries to remove() the directory?

abandoned-cocoon on 17 May 2015

Same issue here.
Directory was generated by rule created from CMake add_custom_command()

ninja clean
[1/1] Cleaning all built files...
FAILED: /usr/bin/ninja -t clean
ninja: error: remove(mydirectory): Directory not empty

mbodmer on 30 Nov 2015

CMakeLists.txt
Issue is still present in 1.7.2 on Windows & Linux.

I added a CMake project that will throw this error on ninja clean (i cant code ninja files).
Note: it works with Make or VS generators.

KUGA2 on 18 Jan 2017

👍3

On linux directories are only removed when they're empty. Can the behaviour be changed to recursive removal?

Would be a pretty big change and people might lose their files. See #1334 btw.

Let's keep this issue about the Windows-only "Permission denied" error though.

jhasse on 17 Apr 2019

Microsoft's documentation for remove says that it "sets errno either to EACCES to indicate that the path specifies a read-only file, specifies a directory, or the file is open...", so that explains what's going on. It doesn't matter if the directory is empty, one simply can't call remove on a directory if using msvcrt.