@ajs6f can you take a look at this?

If you look at how the config is used by ModeShape's factory, it's as an URL (it's passed as an URL). Why not make the config field an URL and not a (Spring-specific) Resource?

Will that work for both files and classpaths? I assumed spring was doing something clever, but maybe it's a java thing?

The ModeShapeRepositoryFactoryBean code:

@PostConstruct
public void buildRepository() throws RepositoryException, IOException {
repository = (JcrRepository) jcrRepositoryFactory
.getRepository(Collections.singletonMap(RepositoryFactory.URL,
repositoryConfiguration.getURL()));
}
shows what's happening: the Spring Resource repositoryConfiguration is only being handled by it's URL. (We're not inspecting anything inside that Resource.) If we want (which we do) to be able to use classpath or filesystem (or, for clustering purposes, perhaps HTTP) URLs, that's a separate concern, I think. Using a Spring Resource to create that URL definitely buys us the classpath URL protocol, but I think that there are better (i.e. not Spring-bound) ways to do that (e.g. this.getClass().getResource()).