How to reproduce: Try installing gulp.
What expected: green hexagon of gulp under npm dependencies in solution explorer with disclosure symbol for showing sub-dependencies.
Actual result: npm tree is ABSOLUTELY empty, previously installed packages are not shown, npm manager fails to open, saying package.json is broken. (You might need to reload the project)
https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/6960#issuecomment-45569604
That could be an isuue of npm itself, but from topic on github it seems like only Windows Explorer and Cmd from the relevant contractants have the problem with long path folder view.
Propotision: please check whether NodejsTool for Visual Studio use UNC path system everywhere and not relative paths to manage packages.
Comments: The basic problem here is that NTVS is mostly managed code and uses .NET classes for file I/O. And .NET has issues with MAX_PATH, _and_ it also prevents the use of \\?\ paths to work around it. So basically anything written in .NET would have to go to great lengths, such as only calling native APIs directly, to avoid it - and then it still breaks as soon as any other managed dependency that didn't care about it was introduced. Basically, this is pervasive throughout VS and the associated build chain - MSBuild has MAX_PATH issues (since it's also managed), and so does a lot of code in VS core, and all managed command-line tools. For a lengthy explanation on why .NET doesn't do MAX_PATH, read [this](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bclteam/archive/2007/02/13/long-paths-in-net-part-1-of-3-kim-hamilton.aspx) (but note that this is an old post, and they didn't actually follow up with the course of action outlined therein). So this is way bigger than what our (NTVS) team can handle on its own. Still, we're thinking about what we can do. Stay tuned. Related issues: https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/862 https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/884