I seem to have this mostly working now, so I guess this is "discussion:" rather than "question".
I am using the version 05.02.00.00 SDK.
Code Compose for linux version 5.01.0026.
I figured out that I should be using the arm-arago-linux-gnueabi tool chain.
(which I asked about here: http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/sitara_arm174_microprocessors/f/416/t/138771.aspx)
Another mistake that I made was to download and build Qt. I built and tried to work with Qt 4.6.2.
But the SDK has Qt 4.6.3 built into it, and I am pretty sure you want to be using that.
This led to great confusion when I started importing Qt projects into CCSv5.
To configure Qt you have to get to the preferences dialog.
The only way I've found to that is project->properties->C++General, then that dialog has a link to:
"Configure Workspace Settings"
In there you need to set the Qt bin and include paths, something like this:
~/ti-sdk-am3517-evm-05.02.00.00/linux-devkit/arm-arago-linux-gnueabi/bin
~/ti-sdk-am3517-evm-05.02.00.00/linux-devkit/arm-arago-linux-gnueabi/usr/include/qtopia
This led problems with my builds trying to link e.g. libQtGui, when all I have in the libraries is libQtGuiE.
Apparently it's an Open Embedded convention to "brand" their libs with a capital E on the end.
I don't really understand where Qt gets its libraries from but I figured it had to be qmake which makes the makefile.
Being very careful to use the 4.6.3 (linux-devkit) qmake, I found that if I rebuilt the project:
qmake -project
qmake
make
that then it would build.
Another detail I discovered is that you have to have the environment set up properly before you start CCSv5.
In the SDK linux-devkit directory is the environment-setup script.
I think the easy way to use that is to source it in your .bashrc so it's always there from login.
If you don't always want your environment set that way, you have to source it in a terminal window and then run CCS from that command line so it gets the right environment.
Hopefully this will help other who might run into similar issues along this, ahem, "interesting" path to am3517 Qt development.
Good luck, you'll need it....