Installing CouchDB in openSuse is not trivial as may seem.
If You google it you’ll find 2 most popular solutions:
(1) Official installation documentation (https://docs.couchdb.org/en/latest/install/unix.html#installation-using-the-apache-couchdb-convenience-binary-packages)
(2) Install using Snap (https://snapcraft.io/install/couchdb/opensuse)
(*) and maybe you’ll simply go with Docker
But what if?
But what if I don’t want to switch to Centos, RHEL, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu?
What if I don’t want to pollute my workspace with SnapCraft and want to keep clean my OS instance only installing stuff from official openSuse repos?
Solution: Build from sources!
Step 1: Create folder in home folder for Applications or name it whatever you like
mkdir ~/Applications
Step 2: Download CouchDB sources .tar.gz
navigate to url: https://downloads.apache.org/couchdb/source/ and find the latest version (in my case 3.4.3)
download, extract it:
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget https://downloads.apache.org/couchdb/source/3.4.3/apache-couchdb-3.4.3.tar.gz
tar -zxf apache-couchdb-3.4.3.tar.gz
cd apache-couchdb-3.4.3
Step 3: Download dependencies (or fight with it at building step)
sudo zypper install gcc gcc-c++ make autoconf automake libtool \
erlang erlang-rebar rebar \
openssl-devel curl-devel \
libicu-devel ncurses-devel \
mozjs128 mozjs128-devel
if there will be issue with finding correct mozjs package run search:
sudo zypper search mozjs
which will return something like this:
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Summary | Type
---+----------------+------------------------------------------+--------
| libmozjs-115-0 | JavaScript's library | package
i | libmozjs-128-0 | JavaScript's library | package
| mozjs115 | SpiderMonkey JavaScript library | package
| mozjs115-devel | Development files and tools for mozjs115 | package
i+ | mozjs128 | SpiderMonkey JavaScript library | package
i+ | mozjs128-devel | Development files and tools for mozjs128 | package
so install necessary latest version:
sudo zypper install mozjs128 mozjs128-devel
Step 4: Let’s build it!
Building has 4 sub steps (“classic” as with most of tarballs in linux):
configuremakemake install- copy result
Sub-step: 1
./configure
if You’ll get this output:
┌[num8er☮g8way1]-(~/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3)
└> ./configure
ERROR: SpiderMonkey 91 is not found. Please specify with --spidermonkey-version.
add version:
./configure --spidermonkey-version=128
should see such output:
┌[num8er☮g8way1]-(~/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3)
└> ./configure --spidermonkey-version=128
==> configuring couchdb in rel/couchdb.config
You have configured Apache CouchDB, time to relax. Relax.
Sub-step: 2
make
it starts like this:
and must end like:
Sub-step: 3
make install
will end like this:
=> smoosh (compile)
==> weatherreport (compile)
==> couch_prometheus (compile)
==> couch_scanner (compile)
==> rel (compile)
==> apache-couchdb-3.4.3 (compile)
==> weatherreport (escriptize)
WARN: 'escriptize' command does not apply to directory /home/num8er/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3/rel
WARN: 'escriptize' command does not apply to directory /home/num8er/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3
Installing CouchDB into rel/couchdb/ ...
WARN: Missing plugins: [pc]
WARN: Missing plugins: [pc]
==> rel (generate)
WARN: 'generate' command does not apply to directory /home/num8er/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3
... done
You can now copy the rel/couchdb directory anywhere on your system.
Start CouchDB with ./bin/couchdb from within that directory.
Notice: There is no 'make install' command for CouchDB 2.x+.
To install CouchDB into your system, copy the rel/couchdb
to your desired installation location. For example:
cp -r rel/couchdb /usr/local/lib
means it’s compiled in rel/couchdb
┌[num8er☮g8way1]-(~/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3)
└> cd rel/couchdb
┌[num8er☮g8way1]-(~/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3/rel/couchdb)
└> ls -la
total 144
drwxr-xr-x. 9 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 .
drwxr-xr-x. 7 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 2 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 bin
drwxr-xr-x. 8 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 erts-15.2.7
drwxr-xr-x. 4 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 etc
drwxr-xr-x. 53 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 lib
-rw-r--r--. 1 num8er num8er 109969 Aug 30 15:45 LICENSE
drwxr-xr-x. 2 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 releases
drwxr-xr-x. 5 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 share
drwxr-xr-x. 3 num8er num8er 4096 Aug 30 15:45 var
Sub-step: 4
As latest output says:
To install CouchDB into your system, copy the rel/couchdb
to your desired installation location. For example:
cp -r rel/couchdb /usr/local/lib
let’s do as it says:
cp -r rel/couchdb /usr/local/lib
or alternative:
cp -r rel/couchdb /opt
“my way”:
I prefer to keep stuff in my home at beginning I’ve created Applications folder in home folder?
cp -r rel/couchdb ~/Applications
let’s update PATH in our shell:
add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:
export COUCHDB_PATH="$HOME/Applications/couchdb"
export COUCHDB_BIN="$COUCHDB_PATH/bin"
export PATH="$PATH:$COUCHDB_BIN"
and reload it:
source ~/.bashrc
or
source ~/.zshrc
Step 5: Run it
couchdb
output will be:
[info] 2025-08-30T13:58:57.616643Z [email protected]
<0.212.0> -------- Preflight check: Checking For Monsters [info] 2025-08-30T13:58:57.616821Z [email protected]
<0.212.0> -------- Preflight check: Asserting Admin Account [info] 2025-08-30T13:58:57.617004Z [email protected]
<0.212.0> -------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
No Admin Account Found, aborting startup. Please configure an admin account in your local.ini file.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
EASY!
edit local.ini (I use nvim):
v $COUCHDB_PATH/etc/local.ini
simply find [admins] section and add user = password under of it
in screenshot I’ve added user admin with password admin since I don’t care in dev env what password will be
P.S. v cause I’ve aliased it in .zshrc:
alias v="nvim"
alias vim="nvim"
Let’s run again:
couchdb
and You should see such line:
Apache CouchDB has started on http://127.0.0.1:5984/
and such screen in browser:
let’s open Fauxton - the management UI
simply open in browser:
BIG P.S. Don’t forget to cleanup temporary files
rm -rf ~/tmp/apache-couchdb-3.4.3*
Keep it clean.
Now we can Relax :)
