[KARAF-1957] Allow to mark features as 'aggregate' features

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.2.9, 2.3.0
• Component/s: karaf
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Raúl Kripalani
• Created: 20/Oct/12 15:36
• Updated: 14/Sep/18 15:14

Description

When creating features descriptors, one would typically cross-reference features in two cases:

• to express dependency => when feature A depends on feature B and feature C
• to express aggregation => when you want to provide a single 'entry point' to install the entire application, i.e. feature A is a conglomerate of feature B and feature C

If you're after the second use case, Karaf has a shortcoming: uninstalling feature A won't automatically uninstall feature B and C.

This makes a lot of sense, so I wouldn't change this behaviour. However, it would be nice to be able to mark a feature as an aggregate, so Karaf will know in what cases it makes sense to uninstall referenced features.

A simplified example:

<feature name="A" aggregate="true">
  <feature>B</feature>
  <feature>C</feature>
</feature>