Why Maven uses JDK 1.6 but my java -version is 1.7

Question

I\'m new to maven, and also to MacOS.

I have setup maven in my terminal, and when getting the version settings (using mvn -v) it seems it uses JDK 1.6,

Answer 1

You can also explicitly tell maven which java version to compile for. You can try adding the maven-compiler-plugin to your pom.

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    [...]
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.7</source>
          <target>1.7</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
    [...]
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

If you imported a maven project into an IDE, then there is probably a maven setting in your IDE for default compiler that your maven runner is using.

Answer 2

Get into

/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions

and update the CurrentJDK symbolic link to point to

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/YOUR_JDK_VERSION/Contents/

E.g.

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
sudo rm CurrentJDK
sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0.jdk/Contents/ CurrentJDK

Now it shall work immediately.

Answer 3

For Eclipse Users. If you have a Run Configuration that does clean package for example.

In the Run Configuration panel there is a JRE tab where you can specify against which runtime it should run. Note that this configuration overrides whatever is in the pom.xml.