What are the limits of a Visual Studio file path?

Question

VS2010 has a mechanism that prevents you from creating projects if the resulting path is too long. I proceeded from the assumption that the maximum path length is 260 characters and the maximum directory path is 256 characters, but when checking VS2010, it seems to set much shorter limits. Does anyone know why and what are these limitations? Thanks.

Answer 1

• You should use less deep hierarchies.
• The CLR has a limit on the path length and file name of no more than 256 characters.
• The maximum recommended project name length is 64 char. Team Foundation Server no longer allows this.