Resolving invalid target release error, java maven build

After running mvn install -DskipTests=true command

I got following error:

[INFO] Scanning for projects...

[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

[INFO] Building visitplanning

[INFO]    task-segment: [install]

[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.3.2 as it requires Maven version 2.0.

9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.3.1 as it requires Maven version 2.0.

9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.3 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.2 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.1 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.7.2 as it requires Maven version 2.0.

9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.7.1 as it requires Maven version 2.0.

9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.7 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.6 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] Ignoring available plugin update: 2.5 as it requires Maven version 2.0.9

[INFO] [resources:resources]

[WARNING] Using platform encoding (Cp1252 actually) to copy filtered resources,

i.e. build is platform dependent!

[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\Workspace\XXXXXXXX\src\main\resourc

es

[INFO] [compiler:compile]

[INFO] Compiling 37 source files to D:\Workspace\XXXXXXXX\target\classes

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

[INFO] Compilation failure

Failure executing javac, but could not parse the error:

javac: invalid target release: 1.6

The solution was pretty simple. Maven uses JAVA_HOME environment variable and by changing it to point to JDK 1.6 the error was resolved.