atlas-run won't start Jira, cause of "Unsupported major.minor version 52.0"

Question

I am developing a Jira plugin with Spring. Now I just want to start the plugin using Jira version 6.1.7 (atlas-run in the working directory), but this is impossible. I am using AMPS-Version 6.2.1 and I get the following error if I try to start the server/Jira. atlas-run is currently using JDK 1.7, so I do in Eclipse and compliance level is set to 1.7. If I change to JDK version 1.8 for the command atlas-run (JDK version 1.7 in Eclipse), I get many many other errors regarding the plugins could not be loaded and Jira is locked.

So my questions no are the following:

1. Do you know the mentioned error (exception trace) and do you know how to fix this?

2. Should I use JDK 1.8 for all development instances (Jira server and Eclipse?)

3. What can I do, if the productive server just uses JDK 1.7?

   [WARNING] Error injecting: com.atlassian.maven.plugins.amps.UpdateMojo java.lang.TypeNotPresentException: Type com.atlassian.maven.plugins.amps.UpdateMojo not present at org.eclipse.sisu.space.URLClassSpace.loadClass(URLClassSpace.java:115) at org.eclipse.sisu.space.NamedClass.load(NamedClass.java:46) at org.eclipse.sisu.space.AbstractDeferredClass.get(AbstractDeferredClass.java:48) at com.google.inject.internal.ProviderInternalFactory.provision(ProviderInternalFactory.java:86) at com.google.inject.internal.InternalFactoryToInitializableAdapter.provision(InternalFactoryToInitializableAdapter.java:55) at com.google.inject.internal.ProviderInternalFactory$1.call(ProviderInternalFactory.java:70) at com.google.inject.internal.ProvisionListenerStackCallback$Provision.provision(ProvisionListenerStackCallback.java:100) at org.eclipse.sisu.plexus.PlexusLifecycleManager.onProvision(PlexusLifecycleManager.java:133) at com.google.inject.internal.ProvisionListenerStackCallback$Provision.provision(ProvisionListenerStackCallback.java:109) at com.google.inject.internal.ProvisionListenerStackCallback.provision(ProvisionListenerStackCallback.java:55) at com.google.inject.internal.ProviderInternalFactory.circularGet(ProviderInternalFactory.java:68) at com.google.inject.internal.InternalFactoryToInitializableAdapter.get(InternalFactoryToInitializableAdapter.java:47) at com.google.inject.internal.InjectorImpl$2$1.call(InjectorImpl.java:997) at com.google.inject.internal.InjectorImpl.callInContext(InjectorImpl.java:1047) at com.google.inject.internal.InjectorImpl$2.get(InjectorImpl.java:993) at com.google.inject.Scopes$1$1.get(Scopes.java:59) at org.eclipse.sisu.inject.LazyBeanEntry.getValue(LazyBeanEntry.java:82) at org.eclipse.sisu.plexus.LazyPlexusBean.getValue(LazyPlexusBean.java:51) at org.codehaus.plexus.DefaultPlexusContainer.lookup(DefaultPlexusContainer.java:260) at org.codehaus.plexus.DefaultPlexusContainer.lookup(DefaultPlexusContainer.java:252) at org.apache.maven.plugin.internal.DefaultMavenPluginManager.getConfiguredMojo(DefaultMavenPluginManager.java:462) at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultBuildPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultBuildPluginManager.java:120) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:208) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:153) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:145) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleModuleBuilder.buildProject(LifecycleModuleBuilder.java:108) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleModuleBuilder.buildProject(LifecycleModuleBuilder.java:76) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.builder.singlethreaded.SingleThreadedBuilder.build(SingleThreadedBuilder.java:51) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.LifecycleStarter.execute(LifecycleStarter.java:116) at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:361) at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:155) at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.execute(MavenCli.java:584) at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.doMain(MavenCli.java:213) at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:157) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:289) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:229) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:415) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:356) Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/atlassian/maven/plugins/amps/UpdateMojo : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0 at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142) at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449) at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:71) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClassFromSelf(ClassRealm.java:389) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy.loadClass(SelfFirstStrategy.java:42) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.unsynchronizedLoadClass(ClassRealm.java:259) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:235) at org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.realm.ClassRealm.loadClass(ClassRealm.java:227) at org.eclipse.sisu.space.URLClassSpace.loadClass(URLClassSpace.java:107)

Answer 1

I have already passed through this same situation. Here are the answers:

1. The error is because the latest versions of JIRA and SDK only runs with Java 8. If you got some compiling errors when using Java 8, so it is not the same problem. For that, check if your IDE is pointing to the maven installation embedded on the Atlassian SDK.
2. Yes.
3. Since JIRA v6.3, both Java 7 and 8 are supported. After JIRA 7, only Java 8 is supported. What I do is to use Java 8 on my development environment and, as I want to support JIRA versions prior to 7, I use target level of Java 7 when packaging the plugin. This means that I use Java 8 to compile, but only Java 7 syntax to avoid incompatibilities. You can configure this on your IDE.

Hope that helps!