[java] Unable to install Maven on Windows: "JAVA_HOME is set to an invalid directory"

My situation was a bit different.

  • JAVA_HOME was set properly to point to 1.7
  • Other Maven projects were working/building fine with 1.7 features.
  • PATH was set properly.
  • Everything was up-to-date.

Still my simple new Maven project was not working. What I noticed was the difference in the logs when I ran mvn clean install. For my older Maven projects, it showed

[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3.2:compile (default-compile) @ oldProject---

But for my new project it showed:

[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.0.2:compile (default-compile) @ newProject ---

So, I looked at the POM.xml and noticed this thing in the old project's POM:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.3.2</version>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.7</source>
                <target>1.7</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Basically, this plugin tells which compiler version to use for compilation. Just added it to the new project's POM.xml and things worked.

Hope it is useful to someone.