First of all, is Hibernate Tools 3.2.4 usable on Eclipse 3.5RC3?

When installing HT for use with an existing project, it would sure be nice if the options to add mapping files gave you the ability to search a tree for all available candidates and preselect them, pending confirmation.

My project uses Oracle. I have the Oracle driver in my maven dependencies. When I proceeded to try to create a database connection for use with HT, I wasn't able to get anywhere. When I clicked "New" on the "Database Connection" line in the "Edit launch configuration properties" (where the field was currently set to "[Hibernate configured connection]"), it brought up a "New Connection Profile" dialog, where it offered only the option of a "Generic JDBC" connection. When I "Next"ed on that, the dialog with the "Drivers" list was empty. Is there something I'm missing that will populate the Drivers list with the Oracle driver from my Maven dependencies?

I don't recall there being any reported issues against Hibernate tools for 3.5, but I would recommend using the latest dev release which is verified on 3.5.

I'm not sure what you want with the mappings files ? add them to cfg.xml or ?

Under Generic JDBC you can configure which drivers to use, they are not bound to the project so wont pick up what is in your jar.

I'm going to guess there isn't an update site for the dev release? I'd have to install it manually?

You don't understand what I would want the Hibernate mapping files for? Am I missing something? What is the point of this if not to have it know what all of my Hibernate mapping files are?