This post is a log of how I personally got Subversion running on Dreamhost using this post.

1. Obtained the Subversion source from http://subversion.tigris.org/project_packages.html#source-release, compiled it, and put the binaries in my ~/bin directory.
2. Added the Subversion binaries to my path by adding these lines to my ~/.bash_profile file.

   # Set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
   if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
     PATH="~/bin:${PATH}"
   fi

   For this change to take effect you either have to relogin or:

   $ . ~/.bash_profile

3. Initialized new subversion repositories. For example:

   $ svnadmin create ~/svn/mk 
   $ svn mkdir \
       file:///home/fkim/svn/mk/trunk \ 
       file:///home/fkim/svn/mk/branches \
       file:///home/fkim/svn/mk/tags

   I am following the suggested way of organizing a Subversion repository.

4. Imported the files into the subversion repository. For example:

   svn import ~/meetingkoreans.com file:///home/fkim/svn/mk/trunk/
   svn import ~/meetingkoreans.com svn+ssh://fkim@meetingkoreans.com/home/fkim/svn/mk/trunk/

   Note: I was having a strange problem when I tried to do an import and kept getting an already exists error.  It turned out the problem was because what I was trying to import was a link instead of the actual directory.  This might only be an issue on Cygwin.

5. Checked the files out. To do this locally:

   svn co file:///home/fkim/svn/mk/trunk meetingkoreans.com

   To do this remotely:

   svn co svn+ssh://fkim@meetingkoreans.com/home/fkim/svn/mk/trunk mkrb