Compiling Java 7 code via Maven

I had the same problem and to solve this I follow this blog article: http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-set-java_home-environment-variable-on-mac-os-x/

$ vim .bash_profile 

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

$ source .bash_profile

$ echo $JAVA_HOME
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home

special tks to @mkyong

EDIT: Now I'm using: jEnv + sdkman

Check the mvn script in your maven installation to see how it's building the command. Perhaps you or someone else has hard-coded a JAVA_HOME in there and forgotten about it.

try using a newer version of the maven compiler plugin:

    <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2</version>
        <configuration>
            <source>1.7</source>
            <target>1.7</target>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>

also, specifying source file encoding in maven is better done globally:

<properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>

EDIT: As this answer is still getting attention i'd just like to point out that the latest values (as of latest edit) are 3.2 for maven compiler plugin and 1.8 for java, as questions about compiling java 8 code via maven are bound to appear soon :-)