Virtual hosts in XAMPP

Im by no means any sort of expert on this, but the following setup works for me.
in httpd-vhosts.conf, make sure the following line is uncommented.

NameVirtualHost *:80

The set up the virtual hosts:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "d:/xaamp/htdocs/dev.somesite.com.­ au"
ServerName dev.somesite.com.au
</VirtualHost>

That works for me. I think you also need to define localhost as a vhost as well.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs"
</VirtualHost>

You can include per directory stuff as well by using <Directory> For example.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "d:/xaamp/htdocs/dev.somesite.com.­ au"
ServerName dev.somesite.com.au

<Directory "D:/xampp/htdocs/dev.somesite.com.­ au">
Options Indexes Includes execCGI
AllowOverride None
Order Allow,Deny
Allow From All
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Then in the hosts file (from memory, in xp its found at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\),­ define hosts like so:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 dev.somesite.com.au

hth