How To: Install VST support (fst) in UbuntuStudio (also applicable to other Ubuntus)

[Stochastic]

Hi, this is one of the first How Tos I've written on here so any assistance in formatting/editing/etc... is greatly appreciated. This is a walk through of how I installed fst - the linux vst host - on my UbuntuStudio Feisty install.

1.)First, you'll need a few pieces of software installed.

sudo apt-get install qjackctl lashd liblash-dev wine wine-dev libgtk2.0-dev

***these packages are the only ones I have proof that are needed, I assume there are others such as gcc that will be used in the make process.

2.)Second, you'll need to download two packages from two different websites. Ardour's website claims that the Steinberg VST 2.3 SDK is the version that you should install. Get that here: http://www.steinberg.de/331+M52087573ab0.html MAKE SURE TO GET 2.3 and yes, you have to agree to Steinberg's terms.
Also you'll need the fst 1.8 file http://joebutton.co.uk/fst/ or a direct link to the file http://galan.sf.net/fst-1.8.tar.gz

3.) Untar the fst file to your desired location. This should create a directory called fst1.8

4.) Unzip the vst_sdk_2_3.zip file to your desktop. This will have created three new files on your desktop: vstsdk2.3.zip, a .sit, and a .dmg we will only be using the .zip file but until the process is finished you should leave all three on the desktop. It's safe to delete all three once fst is installed.

5.) Unzip the new vstsdk2.3.zip file so that the destination is in the previously created fst1.8 folder.

6.) Now open a terminal and go to the fst1.8 folder

cd fst1.8

7.) Make a directory here called vst

mkdir vst

8.) move files as shown here:

 mv vstsdk2.3/source/common/* vst/

9.) now this next step I must give credit to The Muso in the UbuntuStudio IRC channel as I would have been lost here otherwise. Here are his words:

<TheMuso> Open the Makefile in an editor, and look for the line starting with LIBRARIES <TheMuso> Its right under LIBRARY_PATH <TheMuso> At the end of that line, right after -lX11, add a space, followed by -lpthread <TheMuso> Save the file

10.)

make

*** if you get errors at this stage you're probably missing some programs/libraries that I already had installed so I didn't take note of. Let me know which ones those are and I'll add them to the first step. Also if you need to make a second time, first go into the fst1.8 folder and delete the vstsdk2.3.zip, .sit, and .dmg files as these are remade each time you 'make' and make doesn't have the brains to ignore that step if they're already there.

That should be all. You should have created an executable in the fst1.8 folder named fst and now to run your vst plugins make sure lashd is running, jackd (preferably qjackctl) is running, and do

./fst <path to your .dll file here>

To get vst/fst support into ardour follow these instructions: http://ardour.org/building_vst_support

Happy jammin.