Unix ==== Builds need qmake, that is official part of Qt. qmake qwt.pro make The designer is not yet supported in Qt4. For Qt3 you can build the designer plugin: cd designer qmake qwtplugin.pro make make install If you like to build the examples: cd examples qmake examples.pro make If you like to run the examples, don't forget to install the qwt libraries or set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the lib directory of your local build. Qwt doesn't distribute binary unix packages. qwt.spec is a template spec file for building rpm packages. Read the comments at the beginning of qwt.pro how to use it. Win32 ----- Please read the qmake documentation how to convert your *.pro files into your development environment. F.e MSVC with nmake: qmake qwt.pro nmake cd examples qmake examples.pro nmake There is a msvc-qmake.bat batch file for Visual Studio users with Qt >= 3.0 to generate makefiles or project files (.dsp for MSVC-6.0 or vcproj for MSVC.NET) for Qwt, all examples and the designer plugin. To generate makefiles, type: msvc-qmake To generate project files, type: msvc-qmake vc Win32/Qt 4.0.0 Unfortunately qmap.h is buggy in Qt4. You might have to fix the following lines to compile Qwt: qmap.h: line 265: "iterator r = *this;" => "const_iterator r = *this;" qmap.h: line 807: "map.insert((*it).first, (*it).second);" => "map.insert(std::pair<Key,T>(it.key(),it.value()));" There are problems with the declspec declaration with the various MSVC compilers. If Qwt can't be build with your version and you know how to solve it please report. If you use the MinGW compiler from the MSYS shell do: export MINGW_IN_SHELL=1; qmake; make cd examples qmake make -i Good luck !