VMware Workstation 11.1.4, vmware-tools 9.9.5, kernel 4.8.8 ARCH, unity and shared folders issue and solution

[grmpyninja]

I wanted to have Unity support , so I need to use VMware Workstation 11, but I've encountered two issues related to unity and shared folders during the installation.

First of all, the default installation vmware-tools-patches simply installed the newest vmware-tools, so unfortunately no unity support and the one supplied with VMware workstation 11 (9.9.5) could not build vmhgfs correctly, so unity works fine, but no shared folders.

To solve vmhgfs compilation issue:

1. I had to revert to 554ac76733235e51c58a2a2edda8ea1ac1dc5a3f commit, because with the last commit, patch.sh simply skips the patch for 4.7+ kernels for vmhgfs
2. then patch.sh successfully applied 20-vmhgfs-inode_unlock+linkops+cache_macro_cleanup-4.7.patch
3. compile.sh correctly buildt and installed everything, except vmhgfs module could not be loaded, so shared folders still did not work.

However, because in newer kernels legacy vmhgfs is not needed anymore I simply downloaded and installed the newest version (download-tools.sh latest), the one without Unity support, then copied

cp /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse ~/
cp /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libvmhgfs-fuse.so/libvmhgfs-fuse.so ~/libvmhgfs-fuse.so.32
cp /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libvmhgfs-fuse.so/libvmhgfs-fuse.so ~/libvmhgfs-fuse.so.64

Re-installed the version with unity support, the one supplied with VMware 11 (9.9.5), which duriing uninstall removed fuse-related stuff and then I moved copied files to the same locations.

Now both unity and shared folders works fine. If there is anyone who can make it more elegant, do no hesitate to answer here.