Right now the Karaf images get created with an archive of the karaf assembly which then gets unpacked when Karaf is first run.
In the S2I case, this unpacking should occur during the assemble, and the f-m-p should create the docker image with the distro unpacked.
This will allow for faster container bootup times and it should make it easier for users to inspect what karaf files get installed into the docker image since they wont be archived.