Required Java version of Maven Dependency?

The problem is that every dependency (maintainer) can decide on its own which java version is used to compile (1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 etc) so this is not solvable via Maven. But you can make sure that you don’t use dependencies which are using a different Java version than you like to have.

This can be enfored by using Maven Enforcer Plugin by using extra-enforcer-rules:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.1</version> <!-- find the latest version at http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-enforcer-plugin/ -->
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>enforce-bytecode-version</id>
            <goals>
              <goal>enforce</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <rules>
                <enforceBytecodeVersion>
                  <maxJdkVersion>1.6</maxJdkVersion>
                  <excludes>
                    <exclude>org.mindrot:jbcrypt</exclude>
                  </excludes>
                </enforceBytecodeVersion>
              </rules>
              <fail>true</fail>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>extra-enforcer-rules</artifactId>
            <version>1.0-beta-5</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

This will break your build if you have a dependency which is compiled with a different version of JDK than you want to have.