Diff for "Installing_on_Debian"

Pre-packaged

CouchDB is available in Debian repositories, but it typically lags CouchDB releases significantly, and in addition, Debian Squeeze still uses a beta release of Erlang/OTP.

aptitude show couchdb
  Package: couchdb
  State: not installed
  Version: 0.11.0-2.3
  Priority: optional
  Section: misc
  Maintainer: Erlang Packaging Team <pkg-erlang-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>
  Uncompressed Size: 2,167 k
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libcurl3 (>= 7.16.2-1), libicu44 (>= 4.4.1-1), libmozjs2d (>= 1.9.1), erlang-base (>= 1:14.a-dfsg) | erlang-base-hipe (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-crypto (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-inets
         (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-ssl (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-tools (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-xmerl (>= 1:14.a-dfsg), erlang-abi-13.a, adduser, libjs-jquery, lsb-base, procps, mawk
  Description: RESTful document oriented database
   Apache CouchDB is a distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented database accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API. Among other features, it provides robust, incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection and resolution, and is queryable and indexable using a table-oriented view engine with JavaScript acting as the default view definition language.

   CouchDB is written in Erlang, but can be easily accessed from any environment that provides means to make HTTP requests. There are a multitude of third-party client libraries that make this even easier for a variety of programming languages and environments.
  Homepage: http://couchdb.apache.org/

# please don't try this at home
sudo aptitude -y install couchdb

Oy vey! Let's not do that.

Instructions to build, Erlang/OTP, SpiderMonkey, and CouchDB from source follow.

Scripted installation using Build-CouchDB

There is a project called build-couchdb that automates and simplifies the building of CouchDB and it's dependencies. If you want to build the newest version of Couch with the least amount of pain this is probably your best bet. See the project Readme for instructions. I didn't test using build-couchdb, YMMV.

Installing From Source

We'll need some pre-requisites:

# build tools
sudo aptitude install -y build-essential libtool autoconf automake autoconf-archive pkg-config
# dependencies
sudo aptitude install -y libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev lsb-base  ncurses-dev libncurses-dev libmozjs-dev libmozjs2d libicu-dev xsltproc
# optional for building documentation
sudo aptitude install -y help2man python-sphinx texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra texlive-fonts-recommended texinfo

Installing Erlang/OTP

cd /tmp/
wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R15B01.tar.gz
tar xzf otp_src_R15B01.tar.gz
cd otp_src_R15B01
echo "skipping gs" > lib/gs/SKIP
echo "skipping jinterface" > lib/jinterface/SKIP
echo "skipping odbc" > lib/odbc/SKIP
echo "skipping wx" > lib/wx/SKIP
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make && make install

Check that worked by starting the crypto OTP application: erl -eval "case application:load(crypto) of ok -> io:format(\"crypto is working~n\", []), ok; _ -> exit(no_crypto) end." -noshell -s init stop.

Building CouchDB

This assumes you've decided to use the debian-provded mozjs. A later update will explain how best to avoid that.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-js-lib=/usr/lib --with-js-include=/usr/include/mozjs --enable-init
make && make check && make install
# Add couchdb user account
useradd -d /var/lib/couchdb couchdb
# If you want, add your user account to /etc/group #couchdb
chown -R couchdb:couchdb /usr/local/{lib,etc}/couchdb /usr/local/var/{lib,log,run}/couchdb
chmod -R g+rw /usr/local/{lib,etc}/couchdb /usr/local/var/{lib,log,run}/couchdb

# start couchdb
/etc/init.d/couchdb start
# Start couchdb on system start
update-rc.d couchdb defaults

# Verify couchdb is running
curl http://127.0.0.1:5984/
# {"couchdb":"Welcome","version":"1.2.0"}

Useful notes: http://www.freshblurbs.com/install-couchdb-debian-squeeze-source

Python Bits

These are likely needed to build the documentation. When that's available.

aptitude install -y python-virtualenv python-pip
cd $MY_COUCH_SOURCE_REPO
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
which python pip
pip install sphinx docutils pygments