I've been struggling to get VMware tools or open-vm-tools installed in LinHES R7.4 and I haven't had much luck. (I've been running Knoppmyth R5.5 backend-only in ESXi/vSphere 5.1 with the VMware tools for a long time with great luck, but I finally felt it was time to upgrade.) I've followed posts on how to install the VMware version of the tools in arch linux, but I ran into what looks like 32-bit vs. 64-bit problems. I've also seen posts where you can use pacman to install open-vm-tools, but it looks like the LinHES repo doesn't have those packages. My primary reason for wanting to run the tools is so that the host can nicely shut down the guest.

I have two questions:
1) I've seen posts where people were having problems installing a package that wasn't in the repo and the advice was to ask for that package to be added to the standard LinHES repo. What do I need to do to request the open-vm-tools to be added? (Also, is there anything I can do to help? I'm comfortable with other linux distros, but arch is new to me.) Alternatively, could I redirect pacman to use a standard repo without completely messing up my system?
2) Has anyone successfully installed either of these toolsets under ESXi?

Thanks.

Open a ticket at http://linhes.org/projects/linhes/issues/new to report a bug or request a feature. However, there is no new development on R7.x anymore. So if this would be added it would be added to R8.x.
Your feature is much more likely to be added if you can provide a PKGBUILD that works. Take a look at linhes.org/projects/linhes/wiki/Build_a_LinHES_Package and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pkgbuild
Changing your pacman.conf to an Arch repo is NOT advised. While LinHES is based on Arch it is not Arch. WIth some pkgs taking the Arch pkg will work but are taking a risk. Check out pacman -U.