How can I force maven to package my project against 1.5?

Question

I am trying to compile a maven project, the source code uses Generics and other featuers of Java 1.5, thus causing my build to fail

In my POM.xml I have

Answer 1

You have to set some properties to compile with java 1.5

<properties>
    <!-- maven-compiler-plugin configuration -->
    <maven.compiler.source>1.5</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>1.5</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>

Answer 2

You configured the assembly-plugin with some information about source/target but to configure the compiling you need to configure the compiler-plugin in the correct way.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.3.1</version>
  <configuration>
    <source>1.5</source>
    <target>1.5</target>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

Update: This should be combined with maven-enforcer-plugin to force really using of JDK 1.5 instead of only using source/target option of the javac.