Could not read public directory. Remove links and shortcuts and try again. (Firebase)
<p>I was stepping through this tutorial:</p>

<p><a href="https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase-web/#0" rel="noreferrer">https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/firebase-web/#0</a></p>

<p>On step 9 it asks you to execute <code>firebase deploy</code> but when I try to do it I get the error message:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Could not read public directory. Remove links and shortcuts and try again.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I don't know what it means by links and shortcuts as far as I can tell there nothing in this folder but plain old files.</p>

<p>The folder I'm trying to deploy is the <code>web</code> folder which should contain the completed sample. </p>

<p>Note that as per the instructions the <code>storage.rules</code> was updated with the name of the bucket and the index.html was updated with the firebase snippet.</p>

<p>The firebase.json file looks like this:</p>

<pre><code>{
  "database": {
    "rules": "database-rules.json"
  },
  "storage": {
    "rules": "storage.rules"
  },
  "hosting": {
    "public": "./",
    "ignore": [
      "firebase.json",
      "database-rules.json",
      "storage.rules"
    ]
  }
}
</code></pre>

<p>Any ideas as to what this error could be? Is there any way to get more detailed information?</p>