Why does the 260 character path length limit exist in Windows?

Question

I have come up against this problem a few times at inopportune moments:

• Trying to work on open source Java projects with deep paths
• Storing deep Fitne

Answer 1

It does, and it is a default for some reason, but you could easily override it with this registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"LongPathsEnabled"=dword:00000001

See: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jeremykuhne/2016/07/30/net-4-6-2-and-long-paths-on-windows-10/