JDK version - Eclipse, Maven

Do you know what compiler Maven is really compiling with when you choose "install"?

I am able to get a project in Maven-Eclipse-Plugin to compile with a specified compiler when using "Maven build..." option. But when I choose "Maven install" it has a mind of its own and decides to use an old compiler version. This may cause a project to fail to build due to incompatibilities (generics) or introduce security issues because various security flaws have been fixed in newer versions of Java.

What really bugs me is that this happened without me changing anything as noted in this previous post, and is kind of frustrating because have to spend time futzing with this instead of getting work done:

Maven-Eclipse compiler issue

Didn't get so lucky with some simple tweaking in my last post, so added compiler variable to a profile in settings.xml like this:

Specify Maven Compiler JDK version in settings

I added a new profile to my Maven settings.xml file as specified in link above. I called my compiler variable MY_JAVA_HOME and pointed it to the JDK I want to use.

Then I added the maven compiler plugin to my project by right clicking on the project node in Eclipse, choosing Maven (I'm using the Maven-eclipse-plugin as specified in other posts which is the source of the Maven right click menu in Eclipse), then adding this plugin: maven-compiler-plugin.

I then replaced configuration node as specified above but using the variable I created in my settings.xml profile:

        <configuration>
          <verbose>true</verbose>
          <fork>true</fork>
          <executable>${MY_JAVA_HOME}/bin/javac</executable>
          <compilerVersion>1.6</compilerVersion>
        </configuration>

Seems to work, however there is a warning in the above link that this does not necessarily force the compiler to use the specified JDK version (which I find kind of odd also - use my configuration and throw an error if it won't work).

I actually dropped out of Eclipse and ran mvn install from the command line to get a bit more control over what was going on and was able to get all my projects to compile and install again.

I personally don't like when my software applications do things I don't ask them to do and don't tell me about it - and it's not the way I have it configured.