2 ways to solve Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 error in Java

2 ways to solve Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 error in Java

Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 error comes when you run a class file created using Java 1.7 (major version 51.0) into a lower JRE version e.g. JRE 6, 5 or 4. There are two ways to solve this problem, first make sure you run your Java program in same or higher version of JRE, on which it has compiled, and second use cross compilation option to create a class file compatible to a lower JRE. You can use javac -target option to create a class file for all JRE up-to the JDK version you are using for compilation. For example, if you are compiling your Java source file into JDK 1.7 then you can create class files to run on JDK 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 , 1.5 and 1.6 version, but you cannot create class files compatible with Java 1.8. When you compile a Java source file, it creates a class file and add the class file version into it. In order to run that class file, your JRE must understand that version. When JRE or JVM which is running the class doesn't able to understand the class file version they throw java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: XXX : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 error, where XXX is name of your class which has incompatible version.

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