java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: and

I was trying to configure maven cargo plugin when I came across this exception:

Caused by: java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: and

I spent several hours trying to find the meaning of this error message when finally I found this link:


http://jackrabbit.510166.n4.nabble.com/jcr-rmi-problems-td534137.html

The author says:

The "and"
comes from the folder where your classes are which is probably something
beneath "C:\Documents and Settings"

So found the root of the problem, the maven local repository in windows is located at the path:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\.m2

So I have overridden the local maven repository folder adding this entry in the settings.xml maven configuration file:

<localRepository>c:/mavenrepository</localRepository>


After this change the error has disappeared.