What's the reason for “Error:Cannot determine Java VM executable in selected JDK”?

Question

I am using IntelliJ IDEA 13.1.4 and also tried the latest release 14.

Running SBT I get the following error:

Error:Cannot determine Java VM executable in         


        

Answer 1

The issue is usually caused by a wrong JDK version in ".idea/sbt.xml", e.g.:

This option is not updated accordingly when the Project SDK is changed, see SCL-10085. If you have the other JDK (1.7 in my example) generally configured, no error will occur, but the Project SDK will silently be changed back. Otherwise, this error occurs.

The problem can easily be resolved by manually editing the value in ".idea/sbt.xml" to the right JDK version.