In a lot of projects, this is usually done via README. It tells you what running dependencies to install and how to run certain commands.
This can get harder to maintain as things change, the project grows, and complexity increases.
I see two parts to automate here: actually setting up the environment, and running the application or orchestrating multiple apps.
How do you address this?
I’ve been using sdkman for about a decade now and am totally pleased w/ it. It does a very good job of managing JDK versions for you and much more, eg SBT, Gradle, Scala, Groovy, Leiningen, SpringBoot, …
Now, technically you could use sdkman in your CI/CD pipeline too but I’d find it a strong smell. I’ve always used dedicated images pre-configured for a particular JDK version in the pipeline.