When a CompUnit component requires external resources, it is not sufficient to simply install these resources on your computer since the component is going to be deployed on computers whose environments are completely unknown.
We must either package the resource with the component or place it into the CompUnitEnvironment. Admittedly this is going to be a decision to make on a case by case basis. For example, you may note there are small icons within the CAFE editor; these are image files packaged with the CAFE component.
Now, the database manager needs access to the JDBC run-time library. But we shouldn't package the jdbc libraries with the component since it is likely that there may be other components which need the same libraries. So I decided to deploy these JDBC drivers within the CompUnitEnvironment project. You will need to Team->Update the project to see there is a new folder, libs, which contains the driver.
Now, how are these drivers to be told to CompUnit?
Check out the updated .CA files which are in Development. Note that I am not storing these .ca files within the CompUnitEnvironment since that is a global (i.e., the whole world) resource stored by compunit.sourceforge.net. You will need to copy the *.ca files from Development into the applications folder in CompUnitEnvironment. If you open the file up within Eclipse, look at the first few lines of KS_2008_server.ca
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- -->
<!-- CA Application File for KombatSolitaire Server -->
<!--
George T. Heineman (heineman@cs.wpi.edu) -->
<APPLICATION name="ks_server" schema="1.0">
<PROPERTIES name="CLASSPATH">
<PROPERTY name="libs/mysql-connector-java-5.0.5-bin.jar" value="1"/>
</PROPERTIES>
Note that the application itself has a CLASSPATH properties block that tells Foundation about the dependent libraries used by the application. Only the server CA files are updated to do this.
If you have any problems using this feature let me know!