Remove write permissions from a sandbox directory and observe the error we get $ cat >dune-project < (lang dune 3.11) > (using directory-targets 0.1) > EOF $ cat >dune < (rule > (target (dir foo)) > (action (system "mkdir foo && touch foo/bar && chmod -w foo"))) > EOF $ dune build ./foo --sandbox=copy 2>&1 | sed -E 's#/.*.sandbox/[^/]+#/.sandbox/$SANDBOX#g' File "dune", lines 1-3, characters 0-90: 1 | (rule 2 | (target (dir foo)) 3 | (action (system "mkdir foo && touch foo/bar && chmod -w foo"))) Error: failed to delete sandbox in _build/.sandbox/$SANDBOX Reason: rmdir(_build/.sandbox/$SANDBOX/default/foo): Directory not empty Error: rename(_build/.sandbox/$SANDBOX/default/foo): Permission denied -> required by _build/default/foo Manual cleaning step so the dune executing the test suite doesn't croak trying to delete the readonly dir $ chmod -R +w _build && rm -rf _build