[ardour-dev] Ardour 1.0 with VST enabled

[Wolfgang Woehl]

Josh, Shayne, 

Shayne O'Connor <forums at machinehasnoagenda.com>:
> Josh Karnes wrote:
> > Is the only way to get Ardour (future 1.0 release) working with VST
> > going to continue to be having to build from source?

Yes.

> > If so, is there a step-by-step available anywhere as to how to get
> > Ardour to build from source?  I have had 0% success rate doing it
> > in the past, but it's worthwhile to figure it out for VST plugins!

To build Ardour from source follow, more or less slavishly, the BUILD 
Readme. It's in "ardour/DOCUMENTATION/BUILD". Keep in mind that most 
ditributions separate packages into shared objects and stuff and header 
files. So on a SuSE you would install "libxml2" and "libxml2-devel" 
etc. If you build needed libraries from source there is no such 
separation.

> i'm trying to get VST enable, too ...
>
> i have "fst" and "jack-fst" installed, so i was hoping it would just
> be a matter of doing this:
>
> ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-vst

Shayne, take a look at "./configure --help". You want "--enable-vst". 
You should absolutely consider using scons though. It's the new build 
system, slick and neat. With scons you say "scons VST=1" to build 
Ardour with VST support.

> it all seemed to compile and install ok, but running Ardour brings up
> the same old Ardour that was before - i can't see any option to add a
> VST plugin, so i'm assuming i haven't done it correctly ...
>
> what's the proper way to build with VST support enabled (ie - do you
> have to export the path to VST SDK (with VST_PATH=?) before
> compiling; do i need the fst libraries to be statically linked during
> build etc etc)?

Take a look at the output of "./configure --enable-vst". It checks for 
fst and tells you whether that succeeded or failed.

You need an ENV called VST_PATH that points to your vst plugins, so put 
"export VST_PATH=<path to your vstplugins>" in your .bashrc

Some VST plugins crash the host and prevent Ardour from starting up so 
you might want to check first with "jack_fst <some plugin>" and only 
put the successes into your vst plugins directory.

Then you might want to check whether ~/.ardour/ardour.rc has 
"<Option name="use-vst" value="yes"/>"

Wolfgang