diff --git a/src/com/facebook/buck/shell/Genrule.java b/src/com/facebook/buck/shell/Genrule.java
index e9d3994..8559b34 100644
--- a/src/com/facebook/buck/shell/Genrule.java
+++ b/src/com/facebook/buck/shell/Genrule.java
@@ -196,6 +196,8 @@
     for (BuildRule dep : getDeps()) {
       transformNames(processedBuildRules, depFiles, dep);
     }
+
+    environmentVariablesBuilder.put("GEN_DIR", relativeToAbsolutePathFunction.apply(BuckConstant.GEN_DIR));
     environmentVariablesBuilder.put("DEPS", Joiner.on(' ').skipNulls().join(depFiles));
     environmentVariablesBuilder.put("SRCDIR", absolutePathToSrcDirectory);
     environmentVariablesBuilder.put("TMP", absolutePathToTmpDirectory);
@@ -218,7 +220,22 @@
 
     String output = rule.getPathToOutputFile();
     if (output != null) {
-      appendTo.add(relativeToAbsolutePathFunction.apply(output));
+      // TODO(mbolin): This is a giant hack and we should do away with $DEPS altogether.
+      // There can be a lot of paths here and the filesystem location can be arbitrarily long.
+      // We can easily hit the shell command character limit. What this does is find
+      // BuckConstant.GEN_DIR (which should be the same for every path) and replaces
+      // it with a shell variable. This way the character count is much lower when run
+      // from the shell but anyone reading the environment variable will get the
+      // full paths due to variable interpolation
+      if (output.startsWith(BuckConstant.GEN_DIR)) {
+        String relativePath = output.substring(BuckConstant.GEN_DIR.length());
+        if (relativePath.charAt(0) != '/') {
+          relativePath = "/" + relativePath;
+        }
+        appendTo.add("$GEN_DIR" + relativePath);
+      } else {
+        appendTo.add(relativeToAbsolutePathFunction.apply(output));
+      }
     }
 
     for (BuildRule dep : rule.getDeps()) {
diff --git a/test/com/facebook/buck/android/ApkGenruleTest.java b/test/com/facebook/buck/android/ApkGenruleTest.java
index 033ba74..4c0c44a 100644
--- a/test/com/facebook/buck/android/ApkGenruleTest.java
+++ b/test/com/facebook/buck/android/ApkGenruleTest.java
@@ -213,6 +213,7 @@
         .put("SRCS", "/opt/local/fbandroid/src/com/facebook/signer.py " +
             "/opt/local/fbandroid/src/com/facebook/key.properties")
         .put("APK", GEN_DIR + "/fb4a.apk")
+        .put("GEN_DIR", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + GEN_DIR)
         .put("DEPS", "")
         .put("TMP", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + relativePathToTmpDir)
         .put("SRCDIR", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + relativePathToSrcDir)
diff --git a/test/com/facebook/buck/shell/GenruleTest.java b/test/com/facebook/buck/shell/GenruleTest.java
index 66b5d4a..5610210 100644
--- a/test/com/facebook/buck/shell/GenruleTest.java
+++ b/test/com/facebook/buck/shell/GenruleTest.java
@@ -214,8 +214,9 @@
         .put("SRCS", "/opt/local/fbandroid/src/com/facebook/katana/convert_to_katana.py " +
             "/opt/local/fbandroid/src/com/facebook/katana/AndroidManifest.xml")
         .put("OUT", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + GEN_DIR + "/src/com/facebook/katana/AndroidManifest.xml")
+        .put("GEN_DIR", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + GEN_DIR)
         .put("DEPS",
-            "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + GEN_DIR + "/java/com/facebook/util/lib__util__output/util.jar")
+            "$GEN_DIR/java/com/facebook/util/lib__util__output/util.jar")
         .put("TMP", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + pathToTmpDir)
         .put("SRCDIR", "/opt/local/fbandroid/" + pathToSrcDir)
         .build(),