I noted that in a consumer pact test we need to specify the version of the pact plug-in, at least in pact-js If we do, we use the latest version of the plug-in in the plug-in directory, regardless of the version specified in the test. This means the pact gets encoded with the protobuf plug-in later version than specified. On the provider side, the provider test reads the required plug-in version from the file. I had ran my provider test after deleting the latest plug-in from my plug-in folder, which causes my provider test to fail. It might be nice for 1. Use the specified version always, or inform user that you are using a later on on consumer side 2. Provider side - should it alert if it can’t find the correct version plug-in, should it automatically try and download it, if it doesn’t exist Otherwise how do we easily make it visible to a provider, which plugins they require in order to run a particular set of pact verifications. Could there be an ability to retrieve the plugins used for a specific verification, same could be extended to provider states. I could do something with some api calls, get pacts for verification, pull down contents, filter through for provider states and pact plugin entries and print back to the user

I think a user specified semver option might be a way to go. I think Ron uses a semver library under the hood so that behaviour could possibly be improved.

The idea was to use the specified version or a later semver compatible one. But the logic hasn't been tested, so it may not work.

Why not just use the package manager of whatever ecosystem is being used? The need to manage the versions ourselves seems like a strange design choice to me.

You mean the plugin author should package their plugins using every package manager out there? I.e. Maven repo, NPM, Rust crate, Cocopod, homebrew, ...

No, just the ones we support 😉