Reputation: 803

Flutter cannot delete build folder when flutter clean is executed

Whenever I try to clean my flutter project by using the command flutter clean I get an error saying

Failed to remove build. A program may still be using a file in the directory or the directory itself. To find and stop such a program, see:
https://superuser.com/questions/1333118/cant-delete-empty-folder-because-it-is-used

I can understand that there is some directory opened and it has to closes in order to clean. But I cannot understand which one is it. I tried restarting my computer to resolve this issue. But still when I run the command flutter clean I get the error.

Upvotes: 24

Answers (20)

Gordon13

Reputation: 487

I've had this issue for months and couldn't figure it out until now. It was nothing to do with Google Drive or any other process using the folders.

The issue was the naming of the root directory. My project path was like so:

some_other_folder/actual-main-folder

It seems that it doesn't like the character "-" and it doesn't say anything about it when running flutter doctor or any other command.

I changed it to:

actual_main_folder

Where the "-" was replaced by "_" and that fixed everything. No more permissions issues or folders that can't be deleted because they're in use etc.

Hope this helps someone.

Upvotes: 0

Siva Krishna Matta

Reputation: 11

After following the above steps, like closing instances and clean steps, if you still can not delete, May be check is there android studio or emulator or flutter app running...?

Upvotes: 0

Saminas

Reputation: 1

I had the same problem. before cleaning, just stop the running project, then clean

Upvotes: 0

Invictus Warrior

Reputation: 52

What worked for me:

Restart your PC (some current services block flutter clean)
After restart delete your build folder manually (remove write protection before)
Terminal in VSCode execute this command: flutter clean
Execute this command: flutter pub get
Start your App like always :)

Upvotes: 0

Janaka

Reputation: 2795

I had the same problem.

What worked for me was stop anti virus program running on my PC

Then flutter clean worked fine.

After that I restated anti virus program.

Upvotes: -1

Raj dave

Reputation: 1

end all the dart processes
delete build folder if not working then also delete .dart-tools, if still not then delete macos\Flutter\ephemera folder

I had to delete all three folder to get out of this

Upvotes: 0

Tony Malik

Reputation: 1

flutter lib folder and all dart file major red lines in vscode so use this two commands flutter clean and flutter pub get it's work but if your error android folder then you use other way to solve the problem

Upvotes: 0

George Shomali

Reputation: 1

I had that issue before;

Quit vscode or android studio (whichever you're using) and follow the below steps

Open the command line (CMD) as administrator
Go to the root directory of the project.
run flutter clean command

Upvotes: 0

Lalit Fauzdar

Reputation: 6363

I tried every answer from here and then I found out it was my Avast antivirus.

Avast Antivirus (others too maybe) is notorious to block such development activity. You've to add all the SDK and project containing folders in exceptions then it works.

Upvotes: -1