I think this may be (as JB hinted at), a problem with my features, rather than a bug in karaf.
I think the problem is with this feature: https://github.com/steinarb/oldalbum/blob/master/oldalbum.roleadder.test/src/main/feature/feature.xml#L3 created in this commit: https://github.com/steinarb/oldalbum/commit/d05e79fe598091781e760f1b74eb0b53b7df0e32 (this is the feature the resolver infloops on) I will post the conclusions of my debugging on this thread, but other than that I'll go quiet until I've figured this out.