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

You can easily do this on command line using following process :

If you know any of the class name in jar, you can use following command :

javap -cp jarname.jar -verbose packagename.classname | findstr major

example :

    C:\pathwherejarlocated> javap -cp jackson-databind-2.8.6.jar -verbose com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException | findstr major

Output :

    major version: 51

Quick Reference :

JDK 1.0 — major version 45 
DK 1.1 — major version 45 
JDK 1.2 — major version 46 
JDK 1.3 — major version 47 
JDK 1.4 — major version 48 
JDK 1.5 — major version 49 
JDK 1.6 — major version 50 
JDK 1.7 — major version 51 
JDK 1.8 — major version 52 
JDK 1.9 — major version 53 

PS : if you dont know any of the classname, you can easily do this by using any of the jar decompilers or by simply using following command to extract jar file :

jar xf myFile.jar