Running under a new install of Ubuntu 13.04, I have installed Qt and qwt and have 'most' of it running. My current goals are
(1) get qwt plugin to work in qtcreator and
(2) get the qwt header files to link properly from qtcreator.

My Qt is Qt Creator 2.7.0 Based on Qt 5.0.2 (64 bit) and is installed at its default location: /opt/Qt5.0.2.

qwt is installed at its default location: /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/

A fair fraction of all of this works. For example, if I run qtcreator as super-user I can compile and run qwt demos such as curvedemo1. I do get one little warning:

val@zar:/opt/Qt5.0.2/Tools/QtCreator/bin$ sudo ./qtcreator

(qtcreator:4309): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/val/.config/ibus/bus is not root!

To get the qtcreator to find the qwt plugin, I can copy a qwt plugin.so to one of qt's several designer folders:

qwt creates two plugin files:
/usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so 150.7 kB
/usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/designer/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so 195.1 kB

qt has three designer folders:
/opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/examples/designer/
/opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/plugins/designer/
/opt/Qt5.0.2/Tools/QtCreator/bin/designer/



Try .so files in qt's /plugins/designer:
sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/designer/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/plugins/designer/
NOPE

sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/plugins/designer/
NOPE

Try .so files in qt's /examples/designer:
sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/designer/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/examples/designer/
NOPE

sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/5.0.2/gcc_64/examples/designer/
NOPE

sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/Tools/QtCreator/bin/designer/ YES

sudo cp /usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/designer/plugins/designer/libqwt_designer_plugin.so /opt/Qt5.0.2/Tools/QtCreator/bin/designer/ YES

Either of the designer plugin .so files seem to provide the qwt widgets to qtcreator but only if they are put in the designer folder under Tools etc. I wonder what the difference is between the two qwt libraryfiles???

Anyway, that is one way, a brute force way, to get qtcreator to see qwt widgets via a plugin library.

Now we come to (2), linking to the qwt .h files when compiling from my user space (not as root).

I have a trivial qwt project (one widget on form) and compile yields:
/home/val/QT/qwtTest/build-qwtTest-Desktop_Qt_5_0_2_GCC_64bit-Debug/ui_qwttest.h:22: error: qwt_dial.h: No such file or directory

So, I need to link to where qwt has the include files.
I crossed my fingers and put CONFIG += qwt in my .pro file but this did not resolve the link error.
Again, it seems qwt has several possible places where .h files are stored. My missing file can be found at:
/usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/src
/usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/include/

I will first try adding the following to my .pro file:
INCLUDEPATH += "/usr/local/qwt-6.1.0/include"

This got me past the .h file problem and now I have undefined reference errors:
home/val/QT/qwtTest/build-qwtTest-Desktop_Qt_5_0_2_GCC_64bit-Debug/ui_qwttest.h:42: error: undefined reference to `QwtDial::QwtDial(QWidget*)'

Trying the /src location gives the same errors.

At this point I seem to be stuck.

And, getting to the point where qwt objects can be used in qtcreator should not be such an agony!

I welcome any suggestions.