["python","windows","file-permissions","shutil"]
shutil.rmtree fails on Windows with 'Access is denied'

In Python, when running shutil.rmtree over a folder that contains a read-only file, the following exception is printed: File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 216, in rmtree rmtree(fullname, ignore_errors, onerror) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 221, in rmtree onerror(os.remove, fullname, sys.exc_info()) File "C:\Python26\lib\shutil.py", line 219, in rmtree os.remove(fullname) WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'build\\tcl\\tcl8.5\\msgs\\af.msg' Looking in File Properties dialog I noticed that af.msg file is set to be read-only. So the question is: what is the simplest workaround/fix to get around this problem - given that my intention is to do an equivalent of rm -rf build/ but on Windows? (without having to use third-party tools like unxutils or cygwin - as this code is targeted to be run on a bare Windows install with Python 2.6 w/ PyWin32 installed)
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