Ant is not able to delete some files on windows

Question

I have an ant build that makes directories, calls javac and all the regular stuff. The issue I am having is that when I try to do a clean (delete all the stuff that was generated) the delete task reports that is was unable to delete some files. When I try to delete them manually it works just fine. The files are apparently not open by any other process but ant still does not manage to delete them. What can I do?

Answer 1

I encountered this problem once. It was because the file i tried to delete was a part of a classpath for another task.

Answer 2

It depends ...

• The Ant process doesn't have enough permissions to delete the files (typically because they were created by a different user, perhaps a system user). Try running your Ant script as an administrative user, using Run As.
• Windows is really bad at cleaning up file locks when processes die or are killed; consequently, Windows thinks the file is locked by a process that died (or was killed). There's nothing you can do in this situation other than reboot.
• Get better tools to inspect your system state. I recommend downloading the SysInternals tools and using them instead of the default Windows equivalents.