"We have detected that your System Path is close to reaching the Windows limit" when installing RAD Studio (Delphi and C++ Builder)

Question

When installing RAD Studio (Delphi and C++ Builder), I'm getting the following message:

We have detected that your System Path is close to reaching the Windows limit. Please select OK to continue the installation or select Cancel to terminate it.

What is this? What should I do?

Is this something I need to worry about that could come back to bite me in the ass later?

Or can I just safely ignore it and press on "OK"?

Answer 1

PATH is one of Windows' global environment variables. It can be a maximum of 2047 characters long (at least on certain Windows versions), and installing several RAD Studio versions easily hits the roof. If that happens, the path may simply get truncated, leading to hard-to-understand problems in Windows, possibly even rendering Windows unable to start at all.

So, before installing RAD Studio, you should consider your current PATH – does it seem long?

If the PATH is at risk of getting too long, one way to shorten it is to create extra directories, with short names, and make them "junctions" that point to the actual directories. For example (must run Command Prompt as Administrator):

mklink /j "C:\Delphi11" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\RAD Studio\22.0"

Then, replace all occurrences in PATH with the short name.

Or, just install all RAD Studio versions to folders with short paths, e.g. C:\D\XE2, C:\D\XE3, C:\D\10.4, C:\D\11, etc.