I tried to use the karaf-maven-plugin today to generate a features.xml file and discovered that someone had changed some mojo names. If you do this please check tooling/karaf-maven-plugin/src/main/resources/META-INF/plexus/components.xml where these names are used in the packaging descriptions and update them there too so the packagings can work. The features packaging appears to work ok now, I haven't tried the kar or assembly packagings.
thanks david jencks