Hi all, we are currently trying to make Apache Karaf slimmer for the version 4.1.0.
In previous karaf versions we had different spring versions in the karaf spring feature repo. This posed two problems: 1. The karaf resolver always has to work on all provided spring versions which increased the chance a wrong one is picked 2. Karaf can not provide all bugfix versions of spring. So each karaf version comes with a different set. So for a user the upgrade means the spring version changes and he can not upgrade the bugfix version while keeping the karaf version.
So starting with karaf 4.1.0 we split the spring feature repos into the most current version (currently 4.3.5) which is installed by default and a spring-legacy feature repo with the older versions. This fixes problem 1 but also causes problems for some existing features like the activemq 5.14.3 one that requires spring 3.
So a better fix would be to provide one feature repo per spring version and let the 3rd party feature add this to its feature using the repository tag. So only the needed spring version is provided and the maintainer of the 3rd party repo can freely decide which to use.
The problem with this is that karaf is not a good place to provide the feature repos as we release all of karaf together in one version.
So I think servicemix bundles would be a good place to put these feature repos into. The source repo already provides the spring bundles for each version and I think the feature repo would fit nicely into this structure.
If the activemq community likes the idea I will provide pull requests for the spring versions we currently use in karaf.
Christian -- Christian Schneider http://www.liquid-reality.de Open Source Architect http://www.talend.com
