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Eclipse RCP 4.5 contains a fix for that issue.

Cross compilation for older platform versions

In order to use javac to cross-compile to an older release of the platform it is not sufficient to just set the -source and -target options to the older value; the bootclasspath must also be set to correspond to the older release too. Setting the bootclasspath is sometimes forgotten, potentially leading to obscure errors at runtime.

In JDK 9, the new -release flag in javac addresses both of these shortcomings. Now only a single flag (-release) needs to be set to cross compile compared to three flags (-source, -target, -bootclasspath) and the needed information is included in the JDK.

Testing Your Code

In general, it's simpler to start by building your code in your familiar build environment, and test it by running it on JDK 9, than to start by building it on JDK 9. The tools and libraries used in your build process might themselves not yet have been tested with JDK 9 by their developers.

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