Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Can't rm directory symbolic link

Open
#84 5 comments 4 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
rust

Research direction

Start by reproducing rm -rf node_modules on Windows with the reported SYMLINKD entry and inspect the rm handling for directory symbolic links. Done means the command removes the directory symlink without the reported permission error; the issue does not name a source file or test to run.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

C-bug E-help-wanted P-high

I got this error message when running rm -rf node_modules:

rm.cmd: cannot remove '.\opencode\node_modules.bun@aws-sdk+core@3.974.11\node_modules@aws\lambda-invoke-store': Permission denied

These folder types are SYMLINKD.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
5.2k
Forks
107
Avg merge
2d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoft/coreutils

All issues in microsoft/coreutils

Similar issues

More Rust issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.