By default, the bundles deployed through the feature mechanism will have a start-level equals to the value defined in the configuration file config.properties with the variable karaf.startlevel.bundle=60. This value can be changed using the xml attribute start-level.
<feature name='my-project' version='1.0.0'>
<feature version='2.4.0'>camel-spring</feature>
<bundle start-level='80'>mvn:com.mycompany.myproject/ \\
myproject-dao</bundle>
<bundle start-level='85'>mvn:com.mycompany.myproject/ \\
myproject-service</bundle>
<bundle start-level='85'>mvn:com.mycompany.myproject/ \\
myproject-camel-routing</bundle>
</feature>The advantage to define the start-level of a bundle is that you can deploy all your bundles including those of the project with the 'infrastructure' bundles required (e.g : camel, activemq) at the same time.