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rncbc's picture

README.VST is a plain text file; open up with any text file viewer or editor.

$ file README.VST
README.VST: ASCII English text

but now that you ask, here comes its plain content, for your reading pleasure:

Native VST plug-in support
--------------------------

Building for VST support is not that easy. To say the least, it does
not work out of the box. First, due to its licensing issues, you'll
have to go through the nuisance and download yourself the VST SDK,
from its site:

  Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH
  http://www.steinberg.net

specifically, dig it through the 3rd Party Developers section.
It doesn't really matter much whether you pick the VST 2.3 or VST 2.4
version, you need to pick one and just one only. Do not ask for the
recently announced VST 3.0. It won't work and I won't care :)

Once you have downloaded the VST SDK zip-archive, for which you'll
have to accept their license and supply some personal data, you'll
have to unpack the pertinent header files, which are found under
the respective folder:

  - VST SDK 2.3:
    vstsdk2.3/source/common/
      aeffectx.h
      AEffect.h

  - VST SDK 2.4:
    vstsdk2.4/pluginterfaces/vst2.x/
      aeffectx.h
      aeffect.h

Just copy those couple of files to somewhere on your system. You may
choose to copy those files into some of the system standard include
directories (eg. /usr/local/include or /usr/include). That way, all
will be handled automagically by the usual build steps. Otherwise,
you'll need do supply the include path yourself, as in the following:

  ./configure --with-vst=/path/to/vstsdk2.x/include

Next step, once properly built, you'll need to tell where the actual
native VST plug-ins can be found in your file system. The directories
where plug-ins can be picked up by qtractor at run-time are specified
respectively in the View/Options.../Display/Plugin Paths dialog.

Enjoy.