Extending

Apache Karaf is a very flexible container that you can extend very easily.

Shell commands

In addition to annotations, like '@Command' and '@Service', in the command class, you must add karaf-services-maven-plugin configuration to pom.xml.

    <build>
        <pluginManagement>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.karaf.tooling</groupId>
                    <artifactId>karaf-services-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>${project.version}</version>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <id>service-metadata-generate</id>
                            <phase>process-classes</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>service-metadata-generate</goal>
                            </goals>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.karaf.tooling</groupId>
                <artifactId>karaf-services-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
   </build>

See https://github.com/apache/karaf/blob/master/examples/karaf-command-example/README.md to add your own shell commands.

WebConsole

You can also extend the Apache Karaf WebConsole by providing and installing a webconsole plugin.

A plugin is an OSGi bundle that registers a Servlet as an OSGi service with webconsole properties.