java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/springframework/boot/gradle/plugin/SpringBootPlugin : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

Question

My single build.gradle looks like this:

buildscript {
    ext {
        springBootVersion = '2.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT'
    }
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
        maven { url "https://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
        maven { url "https://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:${springBootVersion}")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'
compileJava {
    sourceCompatibility = 1.8
    targetCompatibility = 1.8
}
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = 1.8
targetCompatibility = 1.8

compileOptions {
    sourceCompatibility sourceCompatibility
    targetCompatibility targetCompatibility
}


repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven { url "https://repo.spring.io/snapshot" }
    maven { url "https://repo.spring.io/milestone" }
}


dependencies {
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-jpa')
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-jdbc')
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security')
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-validation')
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web')
    runtime('com.microsoft.sqlserver:mssql-jdbc')
    testCompile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test')
}

But gradle clean build produces:

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* Where:                    
Build file 'D:\objectsharingsystem\build.gradle' line: 16

* What went wrong:          
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'object-sharing-system'.
> java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/springframework/boot/gradle/plugin/SpringBootPlugin : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

* Try:                      
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.

Looks like I use java 8 everywhere.

java_home set to java 8

Answer 1

I had similar issue when building with maven. In my case it appeared that project was built with jdk 1.8 but run on jdk 1.7.

This topic helped me getting into this issue: Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

Answer 2

The problem was that I have changed JAVA_HOME after idea start and I run the gradle build from idea. Thus problem was resolved after idea restart