These days I'm working on a CMS solution and I had all my list definitions and list instances in one feature, so everything was working fine.
But its not ideal as each time I change the list definitions I have to de-activate and re-activate the whole feature. And each time I do that the default data I have defined in list definitions are duplicated.
So I created another feature for list instances but its giving the following error when trying to activate.
"GetUserListSchema(): Failed to get the list schema XML for feature"
Problem was as I was using the element files from the old feature I hadn't defined the "FeatureId" in the "ListInstance" schema. So remember if you have list instances in a different feature than your List definitions, you gotta give the "FeatureId" in the "ListInstance" schema. Its optional if you have all in one feature.