Path too long error when building a windows azure service

I ran into the same problem with a new solution.

Note that, unlike Eugenio Pace's response suggests, the error occurs only when deploying to Azure (and not when running the project in the Azure Compute Emulator).

Try adding the following line to the first property group of your Windows Azure Visual Studio Project file (*.ccproj):

<ServiceOutputDirectory>C:\Azure\</ServiceOutputDirectory>

The trailing slash (for whatever path you select) appears to be required. This folder will be deleted each time you create a package if it exists.

This setting seems to redirect the working folder for the package to a shorter base path, preventing the path too long error.

Credit goes to: http://govada.blogspot.com/2011/12/windows-azure-package-build-error.html

Perhaps the local folder used to store temporary development fabric is too long. See Windows Azure - Resolving "The Path is too long after being fully qualified" Error Message.

I was having this problem as well when deploying a Node.js project to Azure.

To fix it, I had to change my "TEMP" and "TMP" user environment variables to something shorter than their default values.

In my case, they were pointing by default to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp, changing them to C:\Temp solved it.

Make sure you restart Windows after.