By default the maven compiler plugin assumes you’re working with 1.3 compatible sources. So tiger (java 1.5) sources will throw an UnsupportedClassVersionError.

The solution is to configure the maven-compiler plugin in your pom file to generate 1.5 sources like this:

 4.0.0
 be.cappelleh.test
 test
 test
 1.0-SNAPSHOT
 http://maven.apache.org
 
  
   
    maven-compiler-plugin
    
     1.5
     1.5
    
   
  
 
 
  
 

source
o http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-compiler-plugin/