Installing CouchDB on Raspberry is very easy. Start with sudo apt-get install couchdb and you'll have a complete installation very soon, with CouchDB started for you just like that. Try curl http://localhost:5984 and you should be greeted by a friendly JSON message. But, you need a little configuration to make it accessible from outside the pi and autostart on boot.

In /etc/couchdb/local.ini, enable and change bind_address to 0.0.0.0 so CouchDB will be accessible from outside.

In /etc/init.d/couchdb, add the line COUCHDB_USER couchdb somewhere in the beginning.

Now change owner of the db file so CouchDB can access it while running as user couchdb by sudo chown -R couchdb /var/lib/couchdb/1.2.0

Finally, reboot your Raspberry and make sure you can access it from outside the Raspberry.

Now try to remember what you did if you should update CouchDB when a newer package becomes available. I've heard that 1.3.0 is soon to be released.

That's all!