title: Visual Studio and maximum length of the path of a project reference
body: <p>We have a number of projects, and each lives deep in a folder structure.  When one set of projects needs to reference a project in a different folder, the reference can fail because the relative path to is in VS is too long.</p>
  
  <p>For example, project 1 will be in:</p>
  
  <p>C:\folderA\folder1\folder2...\folderN\myProject1.csproj</p>
  
  <p>It references another project:</p>
  
  <p>C:\folderB\folder1\folder2...\folderN\myProject2.csproj</p>
  
  <p>The HintPath to the reference is stored as a relative path, as in ............\folderB\folder1\folder2...\folderN\myProject2.csproj</p>
  
  <p>When VS loads the solution, it can't resolve the reference because the absolute path it builds includes numerous ../'s such that the path exceeds 256 characters.  And the build fails.</p>
  
  <p>We fix it by editing the csproj and putting in an absolute path, which is just silly.</p>
  
  <p>What is the best solution for this?</p>