Hive repository URI doesn't work when path="/"

While working on CDK-385 I came to notice that Hive repository URIs are broken when the path segment of the URI is the root path "/". The JavaDoc indicates that a URI like repo:hive://meta-host:9083/ will be equivalent to repo:hive://meta-host:9083 and use managed Hive tables. What happens instead though is it attempts to create external tables in the root directory.

I tested this with the following configuration of the kite-maven-plugin:

<goals>
  <goal>create-dataset</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
  <repositoryUri>repo:hive://localhost:9083/</repositoryUri>
  <datasetName>Person</datasetName>
  <avroSchemaReflectClass>org.kitesdk.examples.oozie.Person</avroSchemaReflectClass>
</configuration>

The run fails trying to write a /Person directory:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.kitesdk:kite-maven-plugin:0.13.0:create-dataset (create-person-dataset) on project kite-examples-oozie: Execution create-person-dataset of goal org.kitesdk:kite-maven-plugin:0.13.0:create-dataset failed: Hive table creation exception: file:/Person is not a directory or unable to create one -> [Help 1]

It seems to have been broken in a change in 0.12.0 as I tested that version as well as 0.11.0. In 0.11.0 it works as expected.