This is a global issue with Windows, not with Visual Studio. If you use these "new" APIs to write above MAX_PATH [1], the file system will obey you, but tons of

This is a global issue with Windows, not with Visual Studio. If you use these "new" APIs to write above MAX_PATH [1], the file system will obey you, but tons of other tools will not. One of these minor tools is Windows Explorer![2]. So if you updated Visual Studio to support it, a ton of other tooling and UX would fail. This needs to be a corporate wide, product wide, and 3rd party initiative. The scale of which is likely not worth the result. [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36... [2] I don't heavily use Windows anymore, but when I tested < Windows 8 machines with > MAX_PATH, Explorer did not work.