shutil.rmtree fails on Windows with 'Access is denied'

Check this question out: What user do python scripts run as in windows?

Apparently the answer is to change the file/folder to not be read-only and then remove it.

Here's onerror() handler from pathutils.py mentioned by @Sridhar Ratnakumar in comments:

def onerror(func, path, exc_info):
"""
Error handler for ``shutil.rmtree``.


If the error is due to an access error (read only file)
it attempts to add write permission and then retries.


If the error is for another reason it re-raises the error.
    

Usage : ``shutil.rmtree(path, onerror=onerror)``
"""
import stat
# Is the error an access error?
if not os.access(path, os.W_OK):
os.chmod(path, stat.S_IWUSR)
func(path)
else:
raise

I'd say implement your own rmtree with os.walk that ensures access by using os.chmod on each file before trying to delete it.

Something like this (untested):

import os
import stat


def rmtree(top):
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
for name in files:
filename = os.path.join(root, name)
os.chmod(filename, stat.S_IWUSR)
os.remove(filename)
for name in dirs:
os.rmdir(os.path.join(root, name))
os.rmdir(top)

Well, the marked solution did not work for me... did this instead:

os.system('rmdir /S /Q "{}"'.format(directory))

shutil.rmtree(path,ignore_errors=False,onerror=errorRemoveReadonly)
def errorRemoveReadonly(func, path, exc):
excvalue = exc[1]
if func in (os.rmdir, os.remove) and excvalue.errno == errno.EACCES:
# change the file to be readable,writable,executable: 0777
os.chmod(path, stat.S_IRWXU | stat.S_IRWXG | stat.S_IRWXO)
# retry
func(path)
else:
raiseenter code here

If ignore_errors is set, errors are ignored; otherwise, if onerror is set, it is called to handle the error with arguments (func, path, exc_info) where func is os.listdir, os.remove, or os.rmdir; path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail; and exc_info is a tuple returned by sys.exc_info(). If ignore_errors is false and onerror is None, an exception is raised.enter code here

If you run your script using cygwin, you can use subprocess.call

from subprocess import call
call("rm -rf build/", shell=True)

Of course it only works inside the cygwin/bash emulator.