Path names longer than MAX_PATH fail on Windows, even if long paths support is enabled

I am having multiple issues due to including out-of-source dependencies in a CMake project. As CMake uses the absolute path of those, the final path length exceeds the Win32 260-character limit, even when the system is configured to support longer paths. Some file operations pass with such a long path, while others fail with seemingly unrelated messages.

Environment tested

• CMake version: 3.29
• Operating System: Windows 11 23H2 22631.3447
  • System has long path support enabled, and verified working
• Generators: Ninja, MinGW Makefiles and Visual Studio 2022

Minimally reproducible example

1. Create an empty CMake project
2. Set the build folder to a long name during configuration

• I've used 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345, 255-character long.

3. Configuration should fail with an error message of the form TryCompile with Failed to set working directory to <folder>: No such file or directory.

Observations

1. By debugging and pausing on the error, I observed that, during the execution, cmSystemTools::FileIsDirectory returns true, and there are files inside the folder. So Mkdir and other operations worked there correctly, as expected. It always fails at the change of working directory.
2. Microsoft documents that, by adding longPathAware to the application manifest, we should be able to remove this limit for the SetCurrentDirectoryW function. I have tried replacing _wchdir with SetCurrentDirectoryW on cmSystemTools::ChangeDirectory, also adding the clause to the cmake.version.manifest file, and even tried using Encoding::ToWindowsExtendedPath instead of Encoding::ToWide in conjunction with those, but with no success.
3. Some discussion in this StackOverflow thread seems to also have issues, though this GitHub issue from Microsoft indicates that it should work with those steps before. As I was not able to do so, I am opening this issue instead.
4. Although TryCompile is not the only issue I encountered, it is the most easily reproducible, and should hopefully point out to a possible solution for the file moving/renaming issue caused by the same path length reason.