PEP 773: A Python Installation Manager for Windows

ichard26 · April 22, 2025, 9:16pm

(puts on pip maintainer hat)

I’m not on a Windows machine so I can’t verify this easily, but pip does try to detect that the path is too long and raise a more suitable error in this case:

github.com/pypa/pip

src/pip/_internal/commands/install.py

24f460085


      
          # Suggest the user to enable Long Paths if path length is
          # more than 260
          if (
              WINDOWS
              and error.errno == errno.ENOENT
              and error.filename
              and len(error.filename) > 260
          ):
              parts.append(
                  "HINT: This error might have occurred since "
                  "this system does not have Windows Long Path "
                  "support enabled. You can find information on "
                  "how to enable this at "
                  "https://pip.pypa.io/warnings/enable-long-paths\n"
              )

If this isn’t working, please file a bug report. I wouldn’t be surprised if something has broken this in the last four years since this was added to pip.