Once the repository has been downloaded, cd into the mpd dir, and use the script:

./autogen.sh

This creates and runs the ./configure script.

For more options on compiling extra libraries in:

./configure --help

After this has completed to compile the binaries run the command:

make

To install the binaries to the default locations run this command:

make install

stow Edit

"stow" is a nice tool for managing programs which you have installed from sources. To install MPD via stow, type the following:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local/stow/mpd
make
sudo make install
sudo stow -d /usr/local/stow mpd

This way, you can upgrade and uninstall MPD easily, without cluttering /usr/local.

Building on Debian / Ubuntu Edit

sudo apt-get install stow \
  libasound2-dev libmad0-dev libid3tag0-dev libvorbis-dev \
  libflac-dev libwavpack-dev libfaad-dev libshout3-dev libavcodec-dev
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local/stow/mpd
make
sudo make install
sudo stow -d /usr/local/stow mpd

To use the init script from the mpd package, you can add the line "DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/mpd" to /etc/default/mpd.

Well, that's not always true: in Debian init scripts, settings in the default script will be sourced after the script's pre-set DAEMON= line has been evaluated for execution already - thus this will fail if the original package (i.e., /usr/bin/mpd) is not available any more (e.g. in the case of a checkinstall:ed Debian package). You will then have to tweak the DAEMON= line in the Debian-supplied /etc/init.d script directly, unfortunately.

If you have trouble viewing the updated manpage, this may help.