I am trying to move to visual studio code from my Java work. I have the recommended extensions but I am getting strange errors like:

"The compiler compliance specified is 17 but a JRE 1.8 is used"

I do not have a JDK 17 installed (the project needs to be built with Java 8)

In my root pom.xml I have:

<properties>
    <project.source>1.8</project.source>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>

and in the project .vscode/settings.json:

{
    "java.compile.nullAnalysis.mode": "automatic",
    "java.jdt.ls.vmargs": "-XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:GCTimeRatio=4 -XX:AdaptiveSizePolicyWeight=90 -Dsun.zip.disableMemoryMapping=true -Xmx6G -Xms1G -Xlog:disable",
    "java.configuration.updateBuildConfiguration": "automatic",
    "java.configuration.runtimes": [
        {
            "default": true,
            "name": "JavaSE-1.8",
            "path": "/usr/local/sdkman/candidates/java/current",
        }
    ],
    "java.debug.settings.onBuildFailureProceed": true
}

And to validate this is a Java 8:

~ /usr/local/sdkman/candidates/java/current/bin/java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_292"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (Zulu 8.54.0.21-CA-linux64) (build 1.8.0_292-b10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (Zulu 8.54.0.21-CA-linux64) (build 25.292-b10, mixed mode)

On the command line the project builds fine. Any idea what can be causing this?