Website publish failing due to file path being too

Question

I am trying to publish a Website project from a vendor that has ridiculously long paths to some of its files. When publishing, the error is:

The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.

When I publish, Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 is attempting to write to a temp directory, and the prefix is quite long:

 C:\Users\cuser\AppData\Local\Temp\WebSitePublish\MidasCMS400v9-1580334405\obj\Debug\Package\PackageTmp\

I thought I might be able to redirect VS to a different temporary directory at c:\tem by following this SO answer: Temp path too long when publishing a web site project

I create my publication profile, and as soon as I open it, there is an error indicating that WebPublishMethod is not an element of PropertyGroup. Regardless, I updated the file so it looks like this:

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <WebPublishMethod>FileSystem</WebPublishMethod>
    <LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Debug</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
    <LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
    <SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish />
    <ExcludeApp_Data>False</ExcludeApp_Data>
    <publishUrl>C:\Sites\MidasPublish</publishUrl>
    <DeleteExistingFiles>False</DeleteExistingFiles>
    <AspnetCompileMergeIntermediateOutputPath>c:\tem\</AspnetCompileMergeIntermediateOutputPath>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

When I try to publish, I get the a modal box pop-up entitled "File Modification Detected", with the message "The project YourWebsite has been modified outside the environment", and it asks me if I want to reload. In my error list, I continue to get the error about the path being too long, as it is not attempting to use the c:\tem directory I identified.

I need to put this bloody thing onto a server, I am up for any solution that allows me to publish the bloody thing. I don't know much about the Website project template, so please let me know if there is a better way.

Answer 1

From http://forums.asp.net/t/1944241.aspx?Website+publish+failing+due+to+file+path+being+too+long

Add the following line in default PropertyGroup of web project file.

<IntermediateOutputPath>..\Temp</IntermediateOutputPath>

You can likely make the above path C:\temp or ......\Temp (as needed to get it as close to root of the drive as possible.

In my case, there was no .csproj or .vbproj (website project file) but there was a website.publishproj file that warns you not to edit it, but I did anyway, and it did the trick.

Answer 2

This error comes because of long path name....U just cut your folder from current location to D drive or F drive. suppose your project folder name is "myproject", and you should cut this folder and paste to D drive of F drive,that your current path name will be D:\myproject or F:\myproject. Then you publish again......It will work...

Answer 3

While moving the project closer to the root file does work. I found a link to a solution that did work for me. The site also does a great job at discussion the issue as well as the details behind his solution.

Sayed Hashimi's solution to long path issue

Answer 4

The answer of Jason Beck worked to me with a small change. To avoid the error "The IntermediateOutputPath must end with a trailing slash." use the "\" at the end of the path: ..\Temp\

Your "CONFIG_PUBLISH_FILE.pubxml" should look like this (The "..." omits other configuration that you file may have): ... ... ..\Temp\ ...

Answer 5

Thanks to Stelvio, from http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2156195-fix-260-character-file-name-length-limitation , there is a solution :

Well, I found a workaround that ALLOW work with path with more than 260 chars.

Disclaimer: I've tried this trick only on Windows 8 x64 and Visual Studio 2013

So, to make it work I've just create a junction to the folder with the mklink command:

Assume this is the original path: d:\very\very\long\path\to\solution\folder, you can obtain a short link as d:\short_path_to_solution_folder just jaunching this command from a dos shell as administrator: mklink /J d:\short_path_to_solution_folder d:\very\very\long\path\to\solution\folder

change source and destination path to you needs

Best Regards! Stelvio

from this link : http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2156195-fix-260-character-file-name-length-limitation

Answer 6

At the time of publishing the project, the visual studio compiler checks the size of the files that are part of the project.

So I searched for long names in files. I found and renamed those files.

Did Work perfectly