Записки Программиста

IntelliJ IDEA with any JVM

As usual even though I tell my self do not upgrade if it works, I decided to update all plugins in my IDEA IDE today. After restart I noticed that JUnit plugin disappeared. WTF?! It's in the list of installed plugins but none of the shortcuts work and the configuration menu in project tab disappeared. So venturing into the ~/.IntelliJIDEA/system/log discovered that apparently the plugin was compiled using 1.5 JDK because of the following error:

java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/intellij/plugins/junit/actions/ToggleTestCaseTestedClassAction (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass0(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:537)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:448)
        at com.intellij.ide.plugins.a.a.a(a.java:13)
        at com.intellij.ide.plugins.a.a.findClass(a.java:18)
        at com.intellij.ide.plugins.a.b.loadClass(b.java:24)
...

So to solve this problem you would go to the latest 1.5 JDK and run Idea using that. Not that fast though, if you modify the idea.lax file and have the lax.nl.current.vm point to the "java" from 1.5 JDK the Idea won't start telling you "please use supplied JRE". There is a workaround for this, open idea.lax again and locate the lax.nl.java.option.additional line, and add following to the end: -Didea.no.jdk.check=true That will disable the JDK check and will let you run IDEA just fine.