I am very interested in developing a VIX solution for my project. I'm a perl guy first, C++ familiarity lagging way behind. I read the VIX web pages and it infers that Perl is one of a couple of ways to develop a VIX approach. But as I attempt to set up my environment to try out just the examples from VMworld 2007, I find that the Perl approach is not self-contained.... that I maybe need to have the C++ pieces in place first. Some of this is just speculation on my part.
Can anyone here point me to any primarily-Perl oriented material for setting up the VIX development environment on my XP (SP2) machine using Activestate Perl and VMware Workstation 6.x? The vix-perl.zip folder seems to be dropped in the VMware . . . Program Files directory by the VIX installer-for-windows almost as an after-thought. The READ-ME contained there-in has more in it about setting up VIX components in the Perl facility than any web document I found on vmware.com.
I eventually figured out how to get to 'nmake' to build (via the Visual Studio command shell) which installed the proper pieces in the perl library folders. But I still can't get the perl example in VIX Lab\Exercises 1\Perl\ folder (for example) to run. I've fussed with adding things to the PATH environment variable that I was surprised not to have found already on there, and I've probably even done them wrong.... but assuming I could just jump in toward Perl, without first building a C++ example, I've felt like I had to massage it manually. I've manually added c:\Perl\site\bin, c:\program files\vmware\vwware VIX\vix-perl\ and c:\program files\vmware\vmware VIX\ws-5\32bit\ to the PATH variable.... removed the latter one and replaced it with c:\program files\vmware\vmware VIX\server-1\32bit\ (doubting the wisdom of it but....) and I feel like I am running around in circles in dll-HELL because
>perl FindRunningVMs.pl
... currently brings up the error dialog: perl.exe - Entry Point Not Found X The procedure entry point xmlReadMemory could not be located in the dynamic link library libxml2.dll
Perhaps this is just how it is.... I must need to concentrate on the C++ examples before hoping to get the Perl stuff to work. I feel somewhat misled with the promise of using Perl to solve the problem, but I know... beggars can't be choosers..... 
Perhaps my situation seems pathetic, but I would appreciate someone helping me get on a useful track.
Thanks