Sounds a bit harsh. I managed to get a simple gradle build going a few weeks ago with very little work. I say, simple, but it actually uses docker compose to spin up Elasticsearch to run some integration tests (using the gradle docker compose plugin). This was shockingly easy and required no extra work since their ubuntu context already has that pre-installed. So, use ubuntu, checkout code, add Java, configure some caching (optional, but it helps), run build: https://github.com/jillesvangurp/es-kotlin-wrapper-client/bl...

Given that you are using maven, which can be a bit fiddly, might it be the case that some of your issues are with your build? E.g. the way maven deploy works is very dependent on how you set up the pom file.