IntelliJ 14 CE not updating Maven Repository Indices

Was seeing errors when trying to update Maven repositories in IntelliJ 14 CE

Preferences / Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Repositories

All of the Remote Repositories where showing 'Error'.

Hitting Update worked occasionally (like maybe 1/20 times)

Saw this in the Event Log

10:14:25 AM Unindexed remote maven repositories found. Disable...
            The following repositories used in your gradle projects were not indexed yet:
            http://download.java.net/maven/2
            http://maven.springframework.org/milestone
            http://maven.springframework.org/release
            If you want to use dependency completion for these repositories artifacts,
            Open Repositories List, select required repositories and press "Update" button (show balloon)

Also saw Exceptions in idea.log (Help / Show Log in Finder)

Tried alternative WI-FI and Ethernet connections, including the hotspot on my phone.  No change.

On ths advice of these Threads:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-102693
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-138029

I removed the -Xmx512m Setting under Preferences / Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Importing > VM options for Importer

Intially, this seemed to work ... but alas I think it was a coincidence.  It worked fine on the first attempt to update repo1.maven.org, but failed on the others...and ultimately failed when retrying repo1.maven.org.

Then Tried changing the Maven Importing JRE:

Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Importing > JDK for Importer

from the Default (Use Internal JRE (1.6) ) to the JDK 1.8 I had installed.

Again, this seemed to work initially....but failed on second attempt.

Then I tried killing the RemoteMavenServer (java process found using ps aux | grep maven).  This also made the first download attempt work, but subsequent downloads failed.  I suspect changing the -Xmx and JRE in the above attempts was restarting Java ..... and triggering the same effect as killing the maven process.  The problem seems to be in the interaction between IDEA and the external maven process.

For now, my solution is to kill any existing RemoteMavenServer process before clicking the 'Update' button.  An easy way to do this it to make some trivial change in VM Options for Importer .... which causes IDEA to restart the external maven process.

This problem is well characterized here:
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-138029

Hope JetBrains fixes this one soon.