400 characters path limit in Team Foundation Server 2012

This is a brief post to answer a simple question.

“I have been told Team Foundation Server 2012 supports paths longer than 260 chars. How is it possible? How can I manage it?”

Simple question, simple answer: if you have to work on a specific branch, which goes over the limit (eg.: $/Project/SubProject/Branch/…./WhatINeed, over 260 chars) you just have to map it to a shorter local path.

Rationale behind it? This is a needed change in cases we have a huge branching strategy in place, sometimes inherited from migrations of older projects. It impacts just the server, not the clients, so you are still subject to the Windows limit.