In a previous post I described how to configure Maven to use JRuby to perform a build using Rake from within a Maven build process. While running that same process on a newly re-imaged windows box I encountered the following error output: jruby: No such file, directory, or command -- rake This confused me for some time, I’m using jruby-complete which packages rake within itself, how could it not be able to find its own rake? Eventually it occurred to me that the only difference between my new and old windows images was the location of my maven repository. My old image had the repository manually configured to be in a folder which has no spaces in its path, my new image just had the default setting, which placed the repository in c:\Documents And Settings\username\.m2\repository. I manually configured Maven to store the repository in a path with no spaces and hey presto the problem went away. So this is just a short note to remind myself when this problem next crops up: even now in the second decade of the 21st century avoid spaces in file names!!!