$ jdeprscan --release 8 --list
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: invalid flag: -release
at com.sun.tools.javac.main.Arguments.error(jdk.compiler/Arguments.java:796)
at com.sun.tools.javac.main.Arguments.doProcessArgs(jdk.compiler/Arguments.java:393)
at com.sun.tools.javac.main.Arguments.processArgs(jdk.compiler/Arguments.java:303)
at com.sun.tools.javac.main.Arguments.init(jdk.compiler/Arguments.java:259)
at com.sun.tools.javac.api.JavacTool.getTask(jdk.compiler/JavacTool.java:179)
at com.sun.tools.javac.api.JavacTool.getTask(jdk.compiler/JavacTool.java:113)
at com.sun.tools.javac.api.JavacTool.getTask(jdk.compiler/JavacTool.java:68)
at com.sun.tools.jdeprscan.Main.processRelease(jdk.jdeps/Main.java:394)
at com.sun.tools.jdeprscan.Main.run(jdk.jdeps/Main.java:615)
at com.sun.tools.jdeprscan.Main.call(jdk.jdeps/Main.java:692)
at com.sun.tools.jdeprscan.Main.main(jdk.jdeps/Main.java:700)

The problem is that in this mode, jdeprscan passes "-release" to javac, which has been replaced with "--release" in order to conform to the GNU option conventions.