I think it's the normal behavior as by default karaf adds the system folder as a repo (see the org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.defaultRepositories property in the etc/org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.cfg), so the search order is system folder -> local maven repo -> remote maven repo.
We also build karaf distribution in our product as similar what you did, the new build is triggered by changes commits or daily on CI jenkins, then 1) QA always pick up the latest build to do manual/auto testing 2) for developers, we can do quick testing by remove the relevant feature/bundles from system folder after "mvn clean install" them (or comment out the org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.defaultRepositories property), then feature:repo-refresh or bundle:update will take effect for this testing purpose. Regards. Xilai ________________________________ From: Ryan Moquin <fragility...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 4:32:45 AM To: user@karaf.apache.org Subject: Karaf distributions and system repository When building a karaf distribution, I have my main features xml defined in runtime scope but non of the features as installed or boot features. This results in the features xml file being copied to the system repository of the distribution. This is handy since I can skip the feature:repo-add command when I then run the distribution to test it. It appears that this has the side effect that if you updated the features xml (such as when testing snapshots), you can't refresh the features xml that is in the system repository (well you can, but it won't pick up changes from the maven repository), you have to rebuild the whole distribution. I wanted to find out if that is expected behavior and if the only option is to not have the feature defined in the distribution so that it will be loaded and refreshable from the local maven repo? Thanks! Ryan
