I want maven to use JRE system Library [JavaSE 1.8] always while creating new maven quickstart project - spring

Question

I have jdk/jre 1.8 installed on my windows system. In Eclipse whenever I create a quick-start maven project, the project gets created with JRE System Library[J2SE 1.5]. I am fed up of this problem tried to change the execution environment by doing right click on above JRE library-properties and changing the execution environment to 1.8 but again if I update this maven project, the JRE system library goes back again to J2SE 1.5, I also tried changing the compiler compliance to 1.8 which was earlier set to java 10 and also did adding the source and target tag with version 1.8 inside plugin tag of pom.xml but this was also a temporary solution. As when I create a new maven project it sets the default JRE system Library[J2SE 1.5]. Please Provide me with a permanent fix where whenever i create a new maven project, it should be created with JRE System Library[JavaSE 1.8].

Answer 1

Add the following to pom.xml to configure which JDK version you would want to use:
<properties>
<maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
<maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
</properties>
or the followings:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.8.0</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.8</source>
<target>1.8</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
It is because when you do Maven --> Update Project in Eclipse , Eclipse 's maven plugin will use what you define in pom.xml to update the setting of the eclipse project. If you don't specify above settings , the default is to use JDK 1.5 (before maven-compiler-plugin version 3.8.0) or JDK 1.6 (3.8.0+)
Basically I want maven to use JDK 1.8 by default. So that i wont need
to change pom.xml contents again and again while making a new project
If you do not want to change any settings related JDK version in pom.xml after creating a project , you may consider to create your own archetype to fully customize what pom.xml looks like after creating an project. Or a more simple way is to search some Java8 archetype created by others and simply use it such as this.
Refer this for how to create a Maven project with an specific archetype using Eclipse. You may probably need to click "Add Archetype" to configure the require information when you use that archetype for the first time. For example , for this archetype, you have to configure the following for the 1st time:
archetypeGroupId=pl.org.miki
archetypeArtifactId=java8-quickstart-archetype
archetypeVersion=1.0.0