Thanks Steve. The delivered, unpatched version of VMware Tools 8.8.2 (I believe that's what accompanies Workstation 8.0.2) seem to build fine on all the kernel 3.1-based virtual guests I've tried them on (OpenSUSE 12.1 and Debian Sid). The vmhgfs kernel oops I was previously experiencing on both is now gone.
Beyond kernel 3.1, I cannot go. In 3.2, something else breaks again. There seem to have been a fair amount of breaking changes introduced into the kernel APIs recently.