java - generics are not supported in -source 1.3

Question

I have a problem while maven packaging. In this code:

public class LoginDialog extends Dialog {

    private final TextField<String> customer;
                          ^here
    private final TextField<String> login1;
    private final TextField<String> password1;
    private final MainController controller= new MainController();
    private String customerId;
    private String login;
    private String password;

I have an error like:

[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure
...src/main/java/com/messagedna/web/client/widget/LoginDialog.java:[19,27] error: generics are not supported in -source 1.3

what may be the reason of this?

Answer 1

Generics were added in java 1.5. Your maven is compiling for java 1.3.

This can be fixed in one of two ways.

Remove generics so that you can compile for < 1.5

Change the maven configuration to compile for a newer version of java. You should be able to edit your compiler plugin in your pom:

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.5</source>
                <target>1.5</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

This tells maven to compile for 1.5