Depending on your version of Maven, the default Java version assumed by the compiler plugin may be quite old, even as old as not to recognize annotations. When working with annotations you will get compiler errors such as the following:

The method getProgress() of type TextFileReader must override a superclass method

Solution 1

You can configure Maven to accept (-source argument for the Java compiler) and produce byte code for (-target compiler argument) a certain Java version as follows:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.2</version>
      <configuration>
        <source>1.6</source>
        <target>1.6</target>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

Solution 2

It is even simpler to use properties:

<properties>
  <maven.compiler.source>1.6</maven.compiler.source>
  <maven.compiler.target>1.6</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>

Links

• [1] Reference of Maven Compiler plugin