This Bugzilla instance is a read-only archive of historic NetBeans bug reports. To report a bug in NetBeans please follow the project's instructions for reporting issues.
It would be nice if, when choosing a directory for the local maven repository, it would apply some heuristics to deermine whether you've chosen a reasonable directory. An empty directory is probably fine. A directory that contains a "repository" directory means you're off by one level. Perhaps checking that the directory contains "com", "java", or other appropriate top level package names would be good.
Reassigning to default owner.
This old bug may not be relevant anymore. If you can still reproduce it in 8.2 development builds please reopen this issue. Thanks for your cooperation, NetBeans IDE 8.2 Release Boss