<div class="gmail_quote">2009/5/7 Alexander Belchenko <<a href="mailto:bialix@ukr.net">bialix@ukr.net</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi Maritza, Because I'm the one who was involved in writing _win32_delete_readonly, I'll try to provide some hints for you. def _win32_delete_readonly(function, path, excinfo): """Error handler for shutil.rmtree function [for win32] Helps to remove files and dirs marked as read-only. """ exception = excinfo[1] if function in (os.remove, os.rmdir) \ and isinstance(exception, OSError) \ and exception.errno == errno.EACCES: make_writable(path) function(path) else: raise The problem in the code above is that it used too-broad testing for error, e.g. and exception.errno == errno.EACCES: errno.EACCES it's a POSIX-style error constant, IIUC it's about Access Denied. Fortunately it seems like actually we have there WindowsError exception, and therefore can get real Windows Error Code (as of GetLastError() returns). So, if you're adding following debugging prints to the function: def _win32_delete_readonly(function, path, excinfo): """Error handler for shutil.rmtree function [for win32] Helps to remove files and dirs marked as read-only. """ exception = excinfo[1] + print type(exception), dir(exception) + print getattr(exception, 'winerror', None) if function in (os.remove, os.rmdir) \ and isinstance(exception, OSError) \ and exception.errno == errno.EACCES: make_writable(path) function(path) else: raise You will obtain additional information about your error with BeyondCompare3. Especially the second print should print to you actual Windows error code (<a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms681381%28VS.85%29.aspx" target="_blank">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms681381(VS.85).aspx</a>) Knowing actual error code there is possible to imprtove _win32_delete_readonly function to make more fine-grained analysis why deletion of file fails and provide appropriate solution for different cases: deleting read-only files, files currently in use etc. HTH </blockquote><div> That's very helpful and informative, Alexander. Thanks! I will try to follow your lead and report back to the list what this reveals. It will probably be tomorrow or the weekend before I get to it. I am impressed by how rapidly discussions progress here. Do you guys all work for a bzr-friendly boss like Canonical or do you just never sleep? :) -M </div></div>