Like most Autotools-based projects, you need to do:

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --prefix=/where/you/want # defaults to /usr/local
$ make
$ make install # may require extra privileges depending on where to install

After installation the ctags executable will be in $prefix/bin/.

autogen.sh runs autoreconf internally. If you use a (binary oriented) GNU/Linux distribution, autoreconf may be part of the autoconf package. In addition you may have to install automake and/or pkg-config, too.

On some systems, like certain BSDs, there is already a 'ctags' program in the base system, so it is somewhat inconvenient to have the same name for Universal-ctags. During the configure stage you can now change the name of the created executable.

To add a prefix 'ex' which will result in 'ctags' being renamed to 'exctags':

$ ./configure --program-prefix=ex

To completely change the program's name run the following:

$ ./configure --program-transform-name='s/ctags/my_ctags/; s/etags/myemacs_tags/'

Please remember there is also an 'etags' installed alongside 'ctags' which you may also want to rename as shown above.