I'm not much of an Automator/Applescript tinkerer but I grok the concepts. I ran through your actions and I like the intuitive Automator "pipelining" interface. You have a good start and I would want to dive right into starting up processes within Windows guest via vmrun. 
I'll keep watching this thread for developments.
I'll keep watching this thread for developments.
I haven't used Automator Actions before.
I've fooled around with this for ten minutes and haven't got it working, so I thought I'd ask for more detailed instructions.
(1) Where do I look for these commands? I suspect the VMware Fusion menu, under the Services menu item.
(2) I had no Automator directory in either ~/Library or root /Library. Is this normal?
(3) I made an Automator director under /Library and put the three actions there. (I assume they don't need to be under the directory "0" in the ZIP file.) I restarted Fusion and couldn't see any evidence of these actions anywhere. Do I need to restart Fusion, or take some other action to have these actions show up, after installing them?
(4) I then deleted the Automator directory I created, along with the 3 action files in it, started the Automator application and imported these Actions in the top they would install. I tried dragging a single action into a workflow and playing the workflow, but it failed: The action “List Virtual Machines in Library” encountered an error.
(5) It then started to look like a great big hassle to use this package, so I thought I'd go for the vmrun command instead. I looked for vmrun inside the VMware application and couldn't find it: find /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/ -name '*vmrun*' -print Perhaps it's an optional package. Perhaps it's installed somewhere else in the filesystem (/usr/bin). Is this why the Automator actions are failing?
Okay, now I'm going to look for the vmrun docs to find out where it lives...
Some more specific instructions would be very helpful.
Even more helpful would be a Pause function inside Fusion 2.0.5 or 2.0.6.
I've fooled around with this for ten minutes and haven't got it working, so I thought I'd ask for more detailed instructions.
(1) Where do I look for these commands? I suspect the VMware Fusion menu, under the Services menu item.
(2) I had no Automator directory in either ~/Library or root /Library. Is this normal?
(3) I made an Automator director under /Library and put the three actions there. (I assume they don't need to be under the directory "0" in the ZIP file.) I restarted Fusion and couldn't see any evidence of these actions anywhere. Do I need to restart Fusion, or take some other action to have these actions show up, after installing them?
(4) I then deleted the Automator directory I created, along with the 3 action files in it, started the Automator application and imported these Actions in the top they would install. I tried dragging a single action into a workflow and playing the workflow, but it failed: The action “List Virtual Machines in Library” encountered an error.
(5) It then started to look like a great big hassle to use this package, so I thought I'd go for the vmrun command instead. I looked for vmrun inside the VMware application and couldn't find it: find /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/ -name '*vmrun*' -print Perhaps it's an optional package. Perhaps it's installed somewhere else in the filesystem (/usr/bin). Is this why the Automator actions are failing?
Okay, now I'm going to look for the vmrun docs to find out where it lives...
Some more specific instructions would be very helpful.
Even more helpful would be a Pause function inside Fusion 2.0.5 or 2.0.6.
(1) Where do I look for these commands? I suspect the VMware Fusion menu, under the Services menu item.
No, that's not how Automator works. You string together Automator actions using the Automator application to create scripts.
(2) I had no Automator directory in either ~/Library or root /Library. Is this normal?
I think so.
(4) I then deleted the Automator directory I created, along with the 3 action files in it, started the Automator application and imported these Actions in the top they would install. I tried dragging a single action into a workflow and playing the workflow, but it failed: The action “List Virtual Machines in Library” encountered an error.
You're getting closer, and that should have not errored out - I just tried it and it works for me. A quick Google search turns up resources like http://automator.us/leopard/index.html , since it sounds like you're not familiar with Automator, you should probably read up on it.
(5) It then started to look like a great big hassle to use this package, so I thought I'd go for the vmrun command instead. I looked for vmrun inside the VMware application and couldn't find it: find /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/ -name '*vmrun*' -print Perhaps it's an optional package. Perhaps it's installed somewhere else in the filesystem (/usr/bin). Is this why the Automator actions are failing?
vmrun is in /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/, it's not an optional package.
Message was edited by: etung to fix incorrect statements. It's late and it's been a long time since I've looked at this
Welcome to the command line, it's a bit daunting at first but rewarding Short answer: you want "./vmrun" (no quotes)
Long answer: "vmrun" tells the OS to look in all the places it knows about (listed in $PATH) for programs and run the first one called vmrun that it finds. For security reasons, the current directory is traditionally not one of the places it looks (otherwise it's much easier to accidentally run a program, perhaps with security implications). In order to run a program that's not in your $PATH, you need to specify a path to that program so the OS knows you really mean it. "." is the current directory, and "/" is the path separator, so "./vmrun" means "look in the current directory for a program called vmrun and run it". Alternately, you could use "/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmrun" and not have to change into that directory first.
Short answer: you want "./vmrun" (no quotes)Long answer: "vmrun" tells the OS to look in all the places it knows about (listed in $PATH) for programs and run the first one called vmrun that it finds. For security reasons, the current directory is traditionally not one of the places it looks (otherwise it's much easier to accidentally run a program, perhaps with security implications). In order to run a program that's not in your $PATH, you need to specify a path to that program so the OS knows you really mean it. "." is the current directory, and "/" is the path separator, so "./vmrun" means "look in the current directory for a program called vmrun and run it". Alternately, you could use "/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmrun" and not have to change into that directory first.