Karaf feature 'camel-cxf' should not force loading of 'http-whiteboard'

[lichtin]

Karaf feature 'camel-cxf' should not force loading of 'http-whiteboard'

    <feature name="camel-cxf" start-level="50" version="4.18.4">
        <feature version="[4.18,4.19)">camel-blueprint</feature>
        <feature version="[4.18,4.19)">camel-spring</feature>
        <feature version="[2,3)">jakarta-annotation</feature>
        <feature version="[6,7)">jakarta-servlet</feature>
        <feature>http-whiteboard</feature>   <=======

'http-whiteboard' refers to Pax-Web which ultimately starts a servlet-supporting Jetty server.
However this seems an unnecessary coupling and should imho be removed from the 'camel-cxf' feature.

To compare this with 'camel-http' feature, this feature does not explicitly start a web server.

[jbonofre]

This is intentional as users complained to not have the CXF "Available SOAP Services" listing page after HttpService was removed in OSGi 8. HTTPTransportActivator (from camel-cxf-all) unconditionally registers a CXFNonSpringServlet as an OSGi Whiteboard service on bundle activation.

So, you are right, but it's intentional 😄 : it's a real requirement for CXF consumer side (hosting SOAP endpoints), which camel-http doesn't have since it's producer only.

The real problem is that camel-cxf conflates producer-only (calling remote SOAP services, no local endpoint needed) with consumer (hosting one, which does need a servlet container) into one feature.
A possible clean fix mirrors the pattern already used for camel-cxf-jetty: split the whiteboard/servlet registration out of the base camel-cxf feature into its own sub-feature, so producer only users don't drag in Jetty, while consumer users still get http-whiteboard and the working service-list page.

Let me draft something 😄

[jbonofre]

Taking this one. camel-cxf currently forces http-whiteboard (and therefore a running pax-web/Jetty instance) unconditionally, even though that's only needed for the OSGi Servlet Whiteboard-based default HTTP transport used by CXF consumer endpoints — producer-only usage (calling remote SOAP services) and usage with camel-cxf-jetty or another transport (e.g. Undertow) don't need it at all.

I'll split it out the same way camel-cxf-jetty and camel-cxf-spring are already split from the base feature: remove http-whiteboard from camel-cxf and add a new camel-cxf-whiteboard feature (camel-cxf + http-whiteboard) for anyone relying on the default whiteboard-based transport. PR coming shortly.