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perhaps running in a JDK older than Java 11?  It’s recommended to use the  Java toolchain feature in Gradle to separate the JDK/JVM running Gradle from what is needed to compile the code.

<https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/toolchains.html>

what im confused with is that my build is successful but its not compiling

the error above shows the build failing to compile.  Please elaborate on the specific issue.

its my first time using java so am not sure what the error exactly is, whenever I run the application it just says
```Execution failed for task ':api:compileJava'.
&gt; invalid source release: 11

* Try:
&gt; Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace.
&gt; Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
&gt; Run with --scan to get full insights.```


that’s a build failure.  add something like this to build.gradle:
```java {
    toolchain {
        languageVersion = JavaLanguageVersion.of(11)
    }
}```

```
Error: A JNI error has occurred, please check your installation and try again
class has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version 55.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:756)
	at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:468)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:74)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:369)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:363)
	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:362)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:418)
	at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:352)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:351)
	at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:601)

Process finished with exit code 1```

you have an older version of Java installed on your machine.  Install Java 11+.

alternately, explicitly choose Java 11 when running the application.