Picking up on an old thread. It would be very nice to get a native debian package of karaf, so I've opened this RFP: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=881297
Karaf is a small OSGi container/applcation server, that has an SSH daemon, and is provisioned using maven. Basically, you start the karaf as a daemon, SSH in and meet a command line that lets you issue commands to pull in applications and their dependencies using maven. People familiar with OSGi and the common problems associated with resolving runtime dependecies will be pleasantly surprised by karaf features and their resolution mechanism. Karaf boots from a CLASSPATH containing this set of jars (this is from karaf 4.1.4) and the rest is pulled in using maven: /tmp/apache-karaf-4.1.4/lib/boot: total used in directory 4352 available 8069236 drwxr-xr-x 2 sb sb 180 Dec 15 20:14 . drwxr-xr-x 5 sb sb 160 Dec 15 20:14 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 1134 Dec 15 20:14 README -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 1440500 Dec 15 20:14 jna-4.5.0.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 2324986 Dec 15 20:14 jna-platform-4.5.0.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 31235 Dec 15 20:14 org.apache.karaf.diagnostic.boot-4.1.4.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 18181 Dec 15 20:14 org.apache.karaf.jaas.boot-4.1.4.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 150582 Dec 15 20:14 org.apache.karaf.main-4.1.4.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 sb sb 475256 Dec 15 20:14 org.osgi.core-6.0.0.jar Karaf has a concept of "local maven repository" that would fit in nicely with debian's maven layout under /usr/share/maven-repo/ Modifying the setting org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.localRepository in /etc/karaf/org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.cfg, like this: org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.localRepository = /usr/share/maven-repo
