Generate feature xml with feature dependencies using maven plugin - apache-karaf

Question

I am using the maven-feature-plugin
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.karaf.tooling</groupId>
<artifactId>features-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.6</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>generate</id>
<phase>generate-resources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>generate-features-xml</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<bundles>src/main/resources/bundle.properties</bundles>
<kernelVersion>2.3.6</kernelVersion>
<outputFile>target/features.xml</outputFile>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
This works pretty well but one of my generated features depends on the pax-cdi feature is there a way for me to get the plugin to add this for me? For example I have some dependencies defined in the bundle.properties file that cannot be resolved automatically, could I add a feature in this file as well?

Answer 1

You can add the feature as a maven dependency in your pom:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.ops4j.pax.cdi</groupId>
<artifactId>pax-cdi-features</artifactId>
<version>0.8.0</version>
<classifier>features</classifier>
<type>xml</type>
</dependency>
This will result a feature.xml containing the pax-cdi features (providing that karaf-maven-plugin is configured with <aggregateFeatures>true</aggregateFeatures>).
You can also leave it to the container to pull in the pax-cdi feature. Just edit $KARAF_HOME/etc/org.apache.karaf.features.cfg where you can enlist your pax-cdi-features by adding the maven url to the list of featuresRepositories.
featuresRepositories=....
....,\
mvn:org.ops4j.pax.cdi/pax-cdi-features/0.8.0/xml/features
Then add pax-cdi to the list of boot features
featuresBoot=.....,pax-cdi,...
Karaf will start the bundles of pax-cdi when it boots, so that your bundles can find those cdi packages available.

Answer 2

I think that the karaf convention is that the pax-cdi feature should be provided by the container itself, so you don't need to add those bundles to your feature descriptor.
To use pax-cdi feature in karaf enter the following in your Karaf shell
features:addurl mvn:org.ops4j.pax.cdi/pax-cdi-features/0.8.0/xml/features