By defaut, Maven 2 will use the JDK 1.4 to compile the source of your project, which is rather old and obsolete. Fortunately, Maven comes with a Maven Compiler Plugin, which enable Maven to compile the project source with a particular JDK version.

Maven Compiler Plugin

See a Maven Compiler plugin example :

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" 
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 
  http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.mkyong.common</groupId>
  <artifactId>JavaServerFaces</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>JavaServerFaces Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
 
  <build>
    <finalName>JavaServerFaces</finalName>
    <plugins>
       <plugin>
           <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
           <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>2.3.1</version>
           <configuration>
               <source>1.6</source>
               <target>1.6</target>
           </configuration>
       </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Declare the “maven-compiler-plugin” artifact id in pom.xml and specified the particular JDK version in the ‘source’ and ‘target’ element. In this case, it ask Maven to use JDK 1.6 to compile the project source.

Note
For more detail, please visit to this Maven Compiler plugin official page
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