Well http://bugs.python.org/issue7443#msg102833 outlines the problems I encountered while trying to do essentially that. Nothing insurmountable, but definitely bigger than simply adding one line of code.

Looks to me like there are two avenues of approach (and, given the chatter on this issue, several people willing to address them):

* Patch Py_DeleteFileW in posixmodule.c so that it renames before deleting: should solve the problem overall but obviously has a possible wider impact, in general and on performance in particular. This rename might be a simple rename-to-guid or something more sophisticated such as the rename-to-recycler which cygwin uses.

* Patch support.unlink in the test package to do the rename dance on the basis that it'll fix at least some of the problems with less impact overall.

Opinions? I'm willing to do either.