CouchDB has an Ubuntu package for Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) - just do:
aptitude install couchdb
From Source
If you want the latest version of Couchdb but everything else from the repositories then:
In Synaptic select couchdb, this will also select the dependencies (erlang etc.) then unselect couchdb and apply the dependencies
sudo apt-get build-dep couchdb
sudo apt-get install libmozjs-dev libicu-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev
download the latest couchdb .tar.gz file
tar -zxvf apache-couchdb-0.9.0.tar.gz
cd apache-couchdb-0.9.0
./configure
make
sudo make install
now you can run "sudo couchdb" and browse to ![[WWW]](/wiki/modern/img/moin-www.png){kind=small}
http://localhost:5984/_utils to check it is all working
Because you installed all the dependencies of Couchdb from synaptic, but not Couchdb itself some of the dependencies may think they are not required and update manager may suggest that they are removed. Should you do this Couchdb will fail to start, perhaps with an error such as
{"init terminating in do_boot",{undef,[{crypto,start,[]},{erl_eval,do_apply,5},{init,start_it,1},{init,start_em,1}]}}
If this happens simply re-install the dependencies (possibly erlang-nox but it could vary)