@wikiwide: just as a note if you don't want to copy the compiled file into /usr, you may place your .so in /home/user/.config/mbarcode/plugins instead. I don't know why it doesn't work without qmake, and sadly, Qt isn't saying too much about why plugins won't load. I would suggest you make it work with qmake first, and then try to compile it by hand. Good luck!