Netbeans platform does not properly scope classloaders while running qa-functional test code.  The result is that NoClassDefError's occur in instances where an external jar (i.e. importing a class from common-io) is referenced in test code and the same external jar is referenced in multiple NBM's.  Importing from external jars in qa-functional should be avoided.  See jira issue 6954 for more information.

Many of the functional tests require external data sources.  The ant target 'getTestDataFiles' must be run successfully to download the files.  This should occur as a part of the 'test-init' ant target in build.xml.