"Error reading POM" when selecting a archetype in Maven setup

I downloaded maven 3.0.3, set-up my environment variables as instructed and verified with mvn --version that everything looks ok. So far s开发者_如何学Goo good

So, time to RTFM.. about 1 minute into the manual, weirdness occurs.

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes \
  -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app \
  -DartifactId=my-app

It asked me to select a archetype from this long list, I took the quickstart one 135.

However, this doesn't work.. it spits out the following error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.1:generate (default-cli) on project standalone-pom: Error reading POM -> [Help 1]

What am I doing wrong?

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Up-to-date documentation: the free book by Sonatype. I learned some stuff from there even after using Maven for over 3 years.