Compile ardour2.3 on gutsy with vst support

Purpose

Ardour does not provide vst support due to the licensing conditions attached to the vst sdk. This howto sets out a method of building a .deb binary which includes vst support.

This binary cannot be redistributed, but it is useful if you have to setup more than one machine.

Prerequisities

These instructions are for compiling a deb on a ubuntu gusty machine. The instructions should also be applicable for other debian distros if you can get a .deb.

You must be confident to use the command line and apt/dpkg packaging tools to use this howto.

These instructions are for i386 or i686, you will need to get the appropriate diff file and adjust file paths for amd64 machines. 

Step by step

# apt-get install build-essential fakeroot

# apt-get build-dep ardour

# apt-get install fftw3-dev libusb++-dev libflac++-dev

# mkdir ardour2.3 && cd ardour2.3

# wget http://www.getdeb.net/archive/ar/ardour_2.3.1-1~getdeb1.diff.gz

# wget http://www.getdeb.net/archive/ar/ardour_2.3.1.orig.tar.gz

# tar zxvf ardour_2.3.1.orig.tar.gz && cd ardour-2.3

# gzip -dc ../ardour_2.3.1-1~getdeb1.diff.gz | patch -p1 -s

# chmod +x debian/rules

get vst sdk from http://ygrabit.steinberg.de/~ygrabit/public_html/index.html

# mv vst_sdk2_3.zip libs/fst/

edit debian/rules, scroll down to line 60:

DEB_SCONS_EXTRA_FLAGS := \
    PREFIX=/usr \
    NLS=yes \
    $(NJOBS)

and add   "VST=1 \" after the NLS line.

# fakeroot debian/rules binary

this will take a long time and eventually fail, at this point

# ln -sf /path/to/ardour-2.3/debian/tmp/generic/usr/bin/ardourvst /path/to/ardour-2.3/debian/tmp/generic/usr/bin/ardour2

# ln -sf /path/to/ardour-2.3/debian/tmp/i686/usr/bin/ardourvst /path/to/ardour-2.3/debian/tmp/i686/usr/bin/ardour2

# fakeroot debian/rules binary

# cd .. && dpkg -i ardour_2.3.1-1~getdeb1_i386.deb (or ardour_2.3.1-1~getdeb1_i686.deb)