What version of javac built my jar?

Question

How can I tell what version of the Java compiler was used to build a jar? I have a jar file, and it could have been built in any one of three JDKs. We need to know exactly

Answer 1

The code posted by Owen can tell you the information mentioned by a number of the other answers here:

public void simpleExample ()
{
    FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream ("mytest.class");
    parseJavaClassFile ( fis );
}
protected void parseJavaClassFile ( InputStream classByteStream ) throws Exception
{
    DataInputStream dataInputStream = new DataInputStream ( classByteStream );
    magicNumber = dataInputStream.readInt();
    if ( magicNumber == 0xCAFEBABE )
    {
        int minorVer = dataInputStream.readUnsignedShort();
        int majorVer = dataInputStream.readUnsignedShort();
        // do something here with major & minor numbers
    }
}

See also this and this site. I ended up modifying the Mind Products code quickly to check what each of my dependencies was compiled for.