rm on MINGW32, cannot unlink not owner

Question

Similar to rm on cygwin, cannot unlink not owner, but for MINGW32. I tried chmod u+w path but this did not help.

user@computer /d
$ rm dir -d
rm: cannot unlink `dir': Not owner

user@computer /d
$ chmod u+w dir

user@computer /d
$ rm dir -d
rm: cannot unlink `dir': Not owner

Answer 1

super-user (root) is the only account able to use rm -d flag

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From the rm man page

-d, --directory

      unlink FILE, even if it is  a  non-empty  directory  (super-user
      only; this works only if your system supports ‘unlink’ for 
          nonempty directories)

I don't think mingw supports su root or anything like it so using rm -d is unavailable.

Have you tried rm -rf /full/path/to/dir or (if empty) rmdir /full/path/to/dir ?

Answer 2

I don't know mingw but on "real" *nix systems you need write access to the parent dir. You don't specify the permissions of "dir" or it's parent directory but I assume that is the problem here as well.

Answer 3

From the looks of it, it seems like you're trying to 'rm' a directory ("dir"). "rmdir" would rather do the trick.

Otherwise, other things that come to mind:

1. Can you remove the file from windows explorer or a dos prompt? If yes, then it could be a mingw bug.
2. If the file is marked as "read-only" then you can't rm it.