Is there a simpler way to do the first thing, or do I have to configure it like that, at the task level? In contrast to the (different) thing below it

tasks.withType<JavaCompile>().configureEach {
    options.release = 11
}

java {
    sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_11
    targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_11
}

Afaik you have to do it on the task directly. IIRC, back in the day we had some controversial internal discussion about adding

release

as it is to the

java

extension. We ended up not doing it, because we wanted to do something "better" that fits well with toolchains and replaces

sourceCompatibility

/

targetCompatibility

as well. But I don't think this "better" solution was ever done. 😕 I always use

tasks.withType<JavaCompile>().configureEach {
    options.release = 11
}

Shameless plug for tapmoc: https://gradleup.com/tapmoc/ It solves this and other things like setting

options.release

not working on Android (because Android has no

rt.jar

) and a bunch of other stuff

I just discovered that plugin a couple of weeks ago and find it really interesting. I want to explore more to ensure I actually understand what it does 😄

It’s quite complex given the very small API surface ^^

can I ask what the name means?

It's backward 'compat'

It's worth noting that there are some obscure gaps in

--release

like this one, plus the lack of coverage for JDK-internal classes. I almost always set

options.release

but sometimes I have to resort to toolchains