Gradle – Could not target platform: ‘Java SE 8’ using tool chain: ‘JDK 7 (1.7)’

I am trying to import Gradle project in Intellij Idea with local Gradle distrib and getting stacktrace with the following message: Could not target platform: 'Java SE 8' using tool chain: 'JDK 7 (1.7)'. Could anyone explain please what could be the reason?

Answer

Finally I imported my Gradle project. These are the steps:

1. I switched from local Gradle distrib to Intellij Idea Gradle Wrapper (gradle-2.14).
2. I pointed system variable JAVA_HOME to JDK 8 (it was 7th previously) as I had figured out by experiments that Gradle Wrapper could process the project with JDK 8 only.
3. I deleted previously manually created file gradle.properties (with org.gradle.java.homevariable) in windows user .gradle directory as, I guessed, it didn’t bring any additional value to Gradle.