Visual Studio Code showing "Java 11 or more recent is required to run. Please download and install a recent JDK"

Today Visual Studio Code started showing me a pop-up saying:

Java 11 or more recent is required to run. Please download and install a recent JDK.

I need to use the JDK 8 (working on Apache Beam and that's the last supported version). I have been working on that and haven't had any issues until this came up.

I have read through this article and implemented the points mentioned there.

Here is my workspace settings on Visual Studio Code (I have double-checked the paths)

{
    "java.configuration.updateBuildConfiguration": "disabled",
    "java.home": "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home",
    "java.configuration.runtimes": [
        {
          "name": "JavaSE-1.8",
          "path": "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home",
          "default": true
        },
        {
          "name": "JavaSE-11",
          "path": "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home",
        }
      ]
}

Other helpful information:

➜ echo $JAVA_HOME
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home

and

➜ which java
/usr/bin/java

This started happening today even though I have been running JDK 8 on Visual Studio Code successfully for a while now. I don't remember updating Visual Studio Code, so I'm not sure as to why this is being displayed now since apparently the pop-up has been displayed since mid-April (asked on the vscode-java Gitter channel).

Solution 1:

Change from

"java.home": "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home"

to

"java.home": "/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home"

and keep the rest of the settings as is.

Solution 2:

For future readers. If you are using the extension "Spring Boot Tools" you may get a similar error to this. I had my JAVA_HOME set to java 8 but required java 11 to use the Spring Boot Tools Language Server. It seems that Spring Boot Tools uses whatever your JAVA_HOME environment variable is or in the PATH environment variable, Spring Project Issue. To override your JAVA_HOME variable you'll need to modify the spring-boot.ls.java.home setting.

1. Open Visual Studio Code
2. CRTL + , to open the settings
3. Search spring-boot.ls.java.home
4. Select 'Edit in settings.json'
5. Your Java 11 installation → "spring-boot.ls.java.home": "C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk-11.0.10"
6. Save and restart VS Code

Prereq: Have a Java 11 installation