google tells me about a couple of different plugins. features-maven-plugin, karaf-maven-plugin. I am not sure which of these should be used and what versions. Is this dependent on the karaf version ?
features-maven-plugin is deprecated in version >= 3.X as you can see in several Karaf documentation Karaf Doc 3.X and Karaf Doc 4.X .
So if you used a Karaf >= 3.X you must used karaf-maven-plugin .