Why is absolute path not allowed when you specify the local module directory?

I tried to specify one but it just creates it in the current workspace.

e.g.
<scm class="hudson.scm.SubversionSCM" plugin="subversion@1.43">
<locations>
<hudson.scm.SubversionSCM_-ModuleLocation>
<remote>https://puppet-svn.bfm.com/svn-repo/puppet/tags/prod_aladdin</remote>
<local>/local/file-repo/lab</local>
</hudson.scm.SubversionSCM_-ModuleLocation>
</locations>

We use Jenkins to compile Puppet catalogs. We do this for 3 OS types (ie RHEL6.3, RHEL5.8 and Solaris 10). We have 3 jobs setup to do the test against a common branch.

This would be a headache for systems with limited disk space as the job would checkout the SVN branch three times.

I was hoping we can specify an absolute path to optimize disk space. We have a workaround at the moment and this via symlinks.