OS:Fedora 16。
1. 安装Erlang：http://www.erlang.org/
sudo yum install gcc glibc-devel make ncurses-devel openssl-devel autoconf
$ wget http://erlang.org/download/otp_src_R15B01.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf otp_src_R15B01.tar.gz
$ cd otp_src_R15B01
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install
2. 安装依赖：
yum install icu libicu-devel js js-devel libcurl-devel
3. 下载/编译/安装：
wget apache.etoak.com/couchdb/releases/1.2.0/apache-couchdb-1.2.0.tar.gz
tar zxvf apache-couchdb-1.2.0.tar.gz
cd apache-couchdb-1.2.0
./configure
make && sudo make install
4. 启动CouchDB
/usr/local/bin/couchdb
或者以守护进程的形式启动：
sudo adduser -r -d /usr/local/var/lib/couchdb couchdb
sudo chown -R couchdb /usr/local/var/lib/couchdb
sudo chown -R couchdb /usr/local/var/log/couchdb
sudo chown -R couchdb /usr/local/var/run/couchdb
sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/couchdb start
参考文档：http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Installation