Maven throws "Cannot find symbol" in Jenkins - maven

Question

I'm creating a local instance for Jenkins and Sonarqube.
After creating project and after configuring the same, I clicked "Build Now".
In the console output I can see that Maven starts to download the required meta data and once that is completed it throws Compilation error "Cannot find symbol" for each of the file in the project.
Maven is also installed installed in my machine and, I tried downloading the project from GIT and ran maven via command prompt it builds successfully. Only if I build via Jenkins I'm getting this issue. Can someone please help me out with this.
Sonar Error
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:sonar-maven-plugin:2.6:sonar (default-cli) on project XXXXXXX: Execution default-cli of goal org.codehaus.mojo:sonar-maven-plugin:2.6:sonar failed: An API incompatibility was encountered while executing org.codehaus.mojo:sonar-maven-plugin:2.6:sonar: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/sonar/api/utils/SonarException : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
[ERROR] -----------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] realm = plugin>org.codehaus.mojo:sonar-maven-plugin:2.6
[ERROR] strategy = org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.strategy.SelfFirstStrategy
[ERROR] urls[0] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories /1/org/codehaus/mojo/sonar-maven-plugin/2.6/sonar-maven-plugin-2.6.jar
[ERROR] urls[1] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/apache/maven/shared/maven-dependency-tree/2.1/maven-dependency-tree-2.1.jar
[ERROR] urls[2] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/backport-util-concurrent/backport-util-concurrent/3.1/backport-util-concurrent-3.1.jar
[ERROR] urls[3] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-interpolation/1.11/plexus-interpolation-1.11.jar
[ERROR] urls[4] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-component-annotations/1.5.5/plexus-component-annotations-1.5.5.jar
[ERROR] urls[5] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/eclipse/aether/aether-util/0.9.0.M2/aether-util-0.9.0.M2.jar
[ERROR] urls[6] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/sonatype/plexus/plexus-sec-dispatcher/1.4/plexus-sec-dispatcher-1.4.jar
[ERROR] urls[7] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/codehaus/plexus/plexus-utils/1.5.5/plexus-utils-1.5.5.jar
[ERROR] urls[8] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/sonatype/plexus/plexus-cipher/1.4/plexus-cipher-1.4.jar
[ERROR] urls[9] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/org/codehaus/sonar/runner/sonar-runner-api/2.4/sonar-runner-api-2.4.jar
[ERROR] urls[10] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/commons-lang/commons-lang/2.6/commons-lang-2.6.jar
[ERROR] urls[11] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/com/google/guava/guava/10.0.1/guava-10.0.1.jar
[ERROR] urls[12] = file:/C:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/maven-repositories/1/com/google/code/findbugs/jsr305/2.0.3/jsr305-2.0.3.jar
[ERROR] Number of foreign imports: 1
[ERROR] import: Entry[import from realm ClassRealm[project>com.XXXX.etl:XXXX:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT, parent: ClassRealm[maven.api, parent: null]]]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] -----------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] -> [Help 1]

Answer 1

Please specify the compilation version of Java. This is the reason why You are facing this issue - UnsupportedClassVersionError
try adding something like this in Your pom.xml
<build>
<plugins>
<!-- START Of Plugins -->
<!-- MAVEN COMPILER PLUGIN -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.3</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.7</source>
<target>1.7</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<!-- END Of Plugins -->
</plugins>
</build>
Here I have used 1.7 jdk. But You can change that if required.
Please let know if it works...

Answer 2

I had the same error. The problem was that Jenkins service was running on JRE, even though JDK was configured in the system properly. To solve it, I had to stop Jenkins service, delete JRE, modify Jenkins XML to point to JDK, and then restart Jenkins service. Only then it worked.