title: How to bypass TFS error regarding character path limits for directories that have been removed? (Visual Studio 2013)
body: <p>I am using TFS to source control my c# ASP.NET MVC projects. I have a project called <code>ProjectA</code>, It has two branches (i.e <code>ProjectA</code> and <code>ProjectA-Dev</code>.) <code>ProjectA</code> is my production branch, and <code>ProjectA-Dev</code> is my development branch. <code>ProjectA-Dev</code> contains lots of new code for my project's upcoming release.</p>
  <p>I am at a stage that I need to merge any change from production into dev. My production version received a few bug fixes while I was working on my next release in <code>ProjectA-Dev</code>. I want to merge the added bug fixes into my <code>ProjectA-Dev</code> branch.</p>
  <p>To merge <code>ProjectA</code> into <code>ProjectA-dev</code>, I opened &quot;Solution Control Explorer&quot;, right clicked on <code>ProjectA</code> then on &quot;Branching and Merging&quot; then on &quot;Merge&quot;.</p>
  <p>On the Source Control Merge Wizard I selected <code>$/TFS/ProjectA</code> in the source branch. I then selected <code>$/TFS/ProjectA-Dev</code> in the target branch. Then I hit &quot;Next&quot;, selected &quot;Latest Version&quot;, and hit &quot;Finish&quot;.</p>
  <p>The process runs for approximately 10 seconds and then it gives me this error <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDPh9.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDPh9.png" alt="TF400959: The limited of 388 characters for a directory... was exceeded by the path for..." /></a></p>
  <p>The error makes complete sense. However, what is puzzling me is that the <code>node_modules</code> directory does not exist on either branch. Also, I removed the folder <code>node_modules</code> from my local projects.</p>
  <p>I should also note that <code>node_modules</code> used to be in TFS, but then I removed it from TFS few weeks ago using changeset 20000. But, today, in the latest version, the folder <code>node_modules</code> does not exist on TFS. I also validated the same thing via the web portal.</p>
  <p>I tried to remove the TFS cache locally by deleting the content of this folder <code>%localappdata%\Microsoft\Team Foundation\5.0\Cache</code> but the issue still exists.</p>
  <p>How can I bypass this error and correctly merge these changes?</p>