Error when creating a new maven project

When I try create a new maven project (with several archetypes, not only the one below), I am facing this error:

Unable to create project from archetype [org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:RELEASE]
Unable to add module to the current project as it is not of packaging type 'pom'

Anyone know why this is happening, and how to solve it?

It seems that your directory is not empty. this command line works for me: (in an empty directory)

mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=fr.myGroupId -DartifactId=MyApplication -Dpackagename=fr.myGroupId -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart

the result is:

[INFO] Using property: groupId = fr.myGroupId
[INFO] Using property: artifactId = MyApplication
Define value for property 'version':  1.0-SNAPSHOT: : 
[INFO] Using property: package = fr.myGroupId
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: fr.myGroupId
artifactId: MyApplication2
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: fr.myGroupId
 Y: : 
[INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Using following parameters for creating project from Old (1.x) Archetype: maven-archetype-quickstart:1.0
[INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Parameter: groupId, Value: fr.myGroupId
[INFO] Parameter: packageName, Value: fr.myGroupId
[INFO] Parameter: package, Value: fr.myGroupId
[INFO] Parameter: artifactId, Value: MyApplication2
[INFO] Parameter: basedir, Value: /home/ABC-OBJECTIF/philippe.demanget/workspace/pdemanget/tmp/mvn
[INFO] Parameter: version, Value: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] project created from Old (1.x) Archetype in dir: /home/ABC-OBJECTIF/philippe.demanget/workspace/pdemanget/tmp/mvn/MyApplication2
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 9.764s
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Apr 22 13:35:17 CEST 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 14M/216M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can reproduce your error by doing this command line inside the newly created directory:

cd MyApplication
mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=fr.myGroupId -DartifactId=MyApplication -Dpackagename=fr.myGroupId -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart
[...] [INFO] BUILD FAILURE