For anyone curious on how Karaf without Blueprint would look like, here is a karaf branch that is free of blueprint: https://github.com/iocanel/karaf/tree/karaf-light (it's a fork of the karat-2.3.x branch).
It is actually a refactored karaf 2.3.x that removes blueprint from all modules (yet still provides blueprint as feaures). Karaf specific blueprint namespace handlers have moved to optional bundles so that they can still be used if needed. Blueprint has been replaced with Felix SCR (including the shell commands). Moreover, misc refactorings on features and startup bundles have been performed in order to reduce the size and the amount of bundles in the minimal distro. The result is a minimal distribution that starts 12 bundles [1] (out of 37 which were part of karaf 2.3.3 minimal distro). 10 of those bundle were blueprint bundles and the rest are extra noise. My motivation behind this refactoring was: i) I like declarative services more than blueprint. ii) I've been working on projects that are packaged inside the karaf minimal distro which would benefit from a smaller size (e.g. jclouds-cli). iii) I wanted to make a karaf distro as flexible as possible. Please note that my main focus was the minimal distribution and also this is not 100% polished. Enjoy! [1]: The bundle list of the minimal distro: ID State Level Name [ 0] [Active ] [ 0] System Bundle (4.0.3) [ 1] [Active ] [ 5] OPS4J Pax Url - mvn: (1.3.6) [ 2] [Active ] [ 5] OPS4J Pax Url - wrap: (1.3.6) [ 3] [Active ] [ 8] OPS4J Pax Logging - API (1.7.1) [ 4] [Active ] [ 8] OPS4J Pax Logging - Service (1.7.1) [ 5] [Active ] [ 10] Apache Felix Configuration Admin Service (1.6.0) [ 6] [Active ] [ 11] Apache Felix File Install (3.2.6) [ 7] [Active ] [ 13] Apache Felix Declarative Services (1.6.2) [ 8] [Active ] [ 25] Apache Karaf :: Shell :: Console (2.3.4.SNAPSHOT) [ 9] [Active ] [ 30] Apache Karaf :: Features :: Core (2.3.4.SNAPSHOT) [ 10] [Active ] [ 30] Apache Karaf :: Features :: Command (2.3.4.SNAPSHOT) [ 11] [Active ] [ 30] Apache Karaf :: Shell :: Log Commands (2.3.4.SNAPSHOT) [ 12] [Active ] [ 30] Apache Karaf :: Shell :: OSGi Commands (2.3.4.SNAPSHOT) -- Ioannis Canellos Blog: http://iocanel.blogspot.com Twitter: iocanel
