Jar file created using JVM 7 do not work on machines having JVM6 or lower versions. Is it true?

[Vijay Tyagi]

Jar files created using JVM 7 are not working on machines having JVM6 or lower versions for me
It was running fine
I uninstalled JRE7 ,JDK7 and all other JREs and JDKs. And then installed JRE6.I got the error "could not find main class: ABC"
On installing JRE7 again it's working.
Is there a way to make jar files created using JVM7 run on lower versions

[Jesper de Jong]

The simple answer is: no.

Newer Java versions are compatible with older versions, so anything that has been compiled on JDK 6 or older will work on Java 7 (except for some minor issues).

But code compiled with a newer version will not work on an older version.

If you need your code to work on Java 6, then it's best to use JDK 6.

[harshvardhan ojha]

This will give UnsupportedClassVersionError unsupported major.minor version error, i believe. You should compile your code with the same version on which you want to run. If you are using eclipse you can change the compile level.

[Vijay Tyagi]

Suppose a jar file is created using Java 7 update7 ,will it work on a computer having JRE 7 update 5 ?

thanks

[Jesper de Jong]

Yes, that will work. Update releases are only to fix bugs and other problems, no major new functionality is added in update releases.

[Rob Spoor]

Jesper de Jong wrote:But code compiled with a newer version will not work on an older version.

Unless you tell the compiler to make the generated byte code compatible with an older version (-source and -target compiler flags).

[Mike Simmons]

Rob Spoor wrote:

Jesper de Jong wrote:But code compiled with a newer version will not work on an older version.

Unless you tell the compiler to make the generated byte code compatible with an older version (-source and -target compiler flags).

Additionally, your code needs to not depend on any newer library methods or classes. If a method was added in JDK 7, it won't be available using the older library, and your code will fail when it tries to call that method. This can be a little harder to check for - I find if I really need something to run on JDK 6, it's best to compile and test using JDK 6, not relying on the -source and -target options. But it is possible to get it to work using the -source and -target, if you need to. It's just risky.

[Campbell Ritchie]

You should be able to tell which methods are available in Java6, because there should be a “since” tag in the documentation, as here (since 1.4).


Of course, they might have forgotten to write a since tag …

[Mike Simmons]

Sure - if you check every method in the codebase. But that's kind of tedious and error-prone for a large codebase. And I don't know of an automated tool that does it, though it's theoretically possible. Anyone?