Hello,
Sorry I don't know autotools so I can't help you on this topic.
About QtCreator : it is optional, you can develop with the IDE of your choice (in fact, I develop QxOrm and QxEntityEditor with MSVC++ on Windows, and I don't use very much QtCreator for now).
About Qt : QxOrm library is based on Qt, and depends on QtCore and QtSql binaries by default.
qmake is the tool used to generate make files : if you install Qt, then qmake is available on your environment.
But you can use another tool if you don't want to work with qmake : but you have to generate makefiles in the same way than qmake.
The important file to translate in your other system (cmake, autotools or other) is :
QxOrm.pri ==> this file includes all compilation options of QxOrm library.
Please read the manual here for more details :
http://www.qxorm.com/qxorm_en/manual.html#manual_220So my advice if you don't want to use qmake :
1- use qmake a first time to generate make files, and then try to compile QxOrm and your project ==> this way you will see all options passed to the gcc (or other compiler) command line ;
2- use cmake or autotools (or other) : you have to generate make files equivalent to qmake ==> you can compare your results with step 1-.