Is it possible to run kotlin grade plugin using jdk 7 - intellij-idea

Question

My project uses jdk 7 for compatibility reasons.
bottom portion of build.gradle
buildscript {
ext.kotlin_version = '1.2.0'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
classpath "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-gradle-plugin:$kotlin_version"
}
}
When I use jdk 7 for gradle, I get this:
java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/jetbrains/kotlin/gradle/KotlinGradleModel : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:71)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:425)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:270)
at org.gradle.tooling.internal.provider.serialization.DefaultPayloadClassLoaderRegistry$2.resolveClass(DefaultPayloadClassLoaderRegistry.java:91)
at org.gradle.tooling.internal.provider.serialization.WellKnownClassLoaderRegistry$2.resolveClass(WellKnownClassLoaderRegistry.java:91)
at org.gradle.tooling.internal.provider.serialization.PayloadSerializerObjectInputStream.readClass(PayloadSerializerObjectInputStream.java:66)
... cut
If I switch to jdk 8 for running grade while project jdk is still jdk7, the build succeed. Is this expected behaviour?

Answer 1

After hours of research, I finally found this post:
https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2017/04/kotlin-1-1-2-is-out/
The Kotlin compiler now requires JDK 8 to run. You shouldn’t notice
any changes, because most other Java development tools such as Gradle
and the Android toolchain also require JDK 8, so you almost certainly
already have it installed. For code generated by the compiler, Java
1.6 compatibility is still the default, and we have no plans to drop support for generating Java 1.6 compatible bytecode.
So, the answer is no.