CI/CD java with Maven

[RafaelaHaskasa]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Question

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Misc

Discussion Details

I have a group project that we are working on with intellij, JDK25, but as ive seen github doesnt support yet JDK25, can you give me some good options in order to fix this, i really want to work with Maven

[dong11hyun]

Use the setup-java action with the 'zulu' or 'oracle' distribution to dynamically download JDK 25 during your GitHub Actions build.

If that fails, run your workflow inside a Docker container (like eclipse-temurin:25-jdk-alpine) to guarantee the correct environment.

Ensure your pom.xml compiler plugin configuration explicitly targets release 25 to match your JDK version.

[RafaelaHaskasa]

thank you, ill look it up

[Pedroxzz]

Hi @RafaelaHaskasa! following up on @dong11hyun's advice, since Java 25 is the latest feature release, it might not be the default on GitHub runners yet.

You can force the installation in your workflow file. Here is a snippet you can copy into your .github/workflows/maven.yml:

name: Java CI with Maven

on:
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    
    - name: Set up JDK 25
      uses: actions/setup-java@v4
      with:
        java-version: '25'
        distribution: 'temurin' # Temurin (Adoptium) usually supports the latest versions quickly
        cache: 'maven'

    - name: Build with Maven
      run: mvn -B package --file pom.xml

[AMahi1998]

Hi @RafaelaHaskasa You can still use JDK 25 on GitHub Actions even though it’s not preinstalled on the runners yet.
GitHub will download it during the workflow if you install it manually.

Here’s the simplest working setup:

  name: Set up JDK 25
  uses: actions/setup-java@v4
  with:
    distribution: 'temurin'
    java-version: '25'
    cache: 'maven'

Then just build as usual:

  name: Build with Maven
  run: mvn -B package --file pom.xml

If for some reason the runner can’t pull JDK 25, an easy fallback is to run the job inside a Docker image that already includes it:

container: eclipse-temurin:25-jdk

This way you can continue using IntelliJ + JDK 25 locally and still have your CI pipeline match your environment.

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[suresurya]

Just to add one thing nobody mentioned — make sure your pom.xml actually tells Maven to compile against Java 25, otherwise you might set up JDK 25 in the workflow but Maven silently compiles to an older bytecode version.
Add this to your pom.xml:
xml
<maven.compiler.release>25</maven.compiler.release>

Or if you're using the compiler plugin explicitly:
xml
org.apache.maven.plugins
maven-compiler-plugin
3.13.0

25


The release flag is cleaner than setting source and target separately — it also locks the API surface so you don't accidentally use APIs unavailable in that version.
Combined with what @Pedroxzz shared for the workflow, this should give you a fully consistent local + CI environment.