One challenge users and plugin maintainers face is a close coupling between plugin releases and the corresponding pulpcore versions. For example, pulp_rpm 3.15.z supports pulpcore 3.15 and 3.16, but not 3.17. Users wanting to upgrade to pulpcore 3.17 need to upgrade pulp_rpm too which makes upgrades harder. For plugin maintainers, e.g. pulp_rpm maintainers when pulpcore 3.17 is released they must release a pulp_rpm even if it has no meaningful changes, it has to be done in order to declare its safe to use with 3.17.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://pulpproject.org/2021/11/23/increasing-pulpcore-compatibility-with-plugin-versions/