IntelliJ IDEA 13 uses Java 1.5 despite setting to

Question

Despite specifying JDK 1.7 in all project settings (including in File -> Project Structure -> Project :: Project SDK), the following error is produced by IntelliJ 13 when trying to compile some simple Java 7 code which does use the diamond operator:

java: diamond operator is not supported in -source 1.5
(use -source 7 or higher to enable diamond operator)

Is there any other place in the configuration where the expected -source 7 option should be enabled?

Answer 1

In your command line(Unix terminal) Go to your project root folder, and do this

find . -type f -name '*.iml' -exec sed -i '' s/JDK_1_5/JDK_1_8/g {} +

This will change the language level property in all your project .iml files from java 1.5 to java 1.8.

Answer 2

I have same problem but with different situation. I can compile without any issue with maven in command line (mvn clean install), but in Intellij I always got "java: diamond operator is not supported in -source 1.5" compile error despite I have set the maven-compiler-plugin with java 1.8 in the pom.xml.

It turned out I have remote repository setting in my maven's settings.xml which the project depends on, but Intellij uses his own maven which doesn't have same setting with my local maven.

So my solution was changing the Intellij's maven setting (Settings -> Build, execution, Deployment -> Maven -> Maven home directory) to use the local maven.

Answer 3

I had the following property working for me in IntelliJ 2017

  <properties>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>       
  </properties>

Answer 4

If nothing of this helps (my case), you can set it in your pom.xml, like this:

<properties>
  <maven.compiler.source>1.7</maven.compiler.source>
  <maven.compiler.target>1.7</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>

As this cool guy mentioned here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/25888116/1643465

Answer 5

File->Project structure->Project Settings->Project->Project Language level

File->Project structure->Project Settings->Modules->Language level

Change level using drop down

Answer 6

Alternatively, you can apply maven-compiler-plugin with appropriate java version by adding this to your pom.xml:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.8</source>
                <target>1.8</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>