Intellij somehow thinks a maven project is intending to use java 1.4

Question

As shown in following screenshot - the project SDK and language level are 1.8:

And I went through all of the project modules: they are all likewise defined as 1.8. One of them is shown below:

Yet somehow IJ attached a language level of 1.4 to one of the modules

But actually .. it is not even that straightforward. E.g. the intellisense thinks 1.4:

But when I click on the java.lang.String underlined in red, it DOES go to 1.8:

The pom.xml for the culprit module 'icloud' makes no mention of any java level - so it is not to blame:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.apache.ignite</groupId>
        <artifactId>ignite-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1</version>
        <relativePath>../../parent</relativePath>
    </parent>

    <artifactId>ignite-cloud</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.3-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <jcloud.version>1.9.0</jcloud.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.ignite</groupId>
            <artifactId>ignite-core</artifactId>
            <version>${project.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.jclouds</groupId>
            <artifactId>jclouds-allcompute</artifactId>
            <version>${jcloud.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.jclouds.labs</groupId>
            <artifactId>google-compute-engine</artifactId>
            <version>${jcloud.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.jclouds.labs</groupId>
            <artifactId>docker</artifactId>
            <version>${jcloud.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.jclouds.provider</groupId>
            <artifactId>cloudsigma-zrh</artifactId>
            <version>1.8.0</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.ignite</groupId>
            <artifactId>ignite-core</artifactId>
            <version>${project.version}</version>
            <type>test-jar</type>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

</project>

I have done Build|Rebuild twice. Also have done

mvn clean package

from command line twice. This is just a big time sink (/waste). So then: why is IJ sabotaging this module - and is there a workaround?

Answer 1

The problem was that intellij could not handle the examples subproject being

• underneath a parent directory containing the main parent project
• but the directory is its own self contained project with no relation to the parent

The workaround is to create an entirely independent project for the examples module.

The other suggested answer - about adding the compiler plugin - made no difference.

Answer 2

Add a the compiler plugin to pom.xml and reimport the pom will solve this issue

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.8</source>
                <target>1.8</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>