Why do I get an "unrecognized URL scheme" error when I try to check out Subversion after building the distribution binary?

The error you are seeing means that the dynamic linker/loader can't find the plugins to load.

This normally happens when you build Subversion with shared libraries, then attempt to run it without first running make install. Another possible cause is that you ran make install, but the libraries were installed in a location that the dynamic linker/loader doesn't recognize. Under Linux, you can allow the linker/loader to find the libraries by adding the library directory to /etc/ld.so.conf and running ldconfig. If you don't wish to do this, or you don't have root access, you can also specify the library directory in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

Subversion uses a plugin system to allow access to repositories. Currently there are three of these plugins: ra_local, which allows access to a local repository; ra_dav, which allows access to a repository via WebDAV; and ra_svn, which allows local or remote access via the svnserve server. When you attempt to perform an operation in Subversion, the program tries to dynamically load a plugin based on the URL scheme. A file:// URL will try to load ra_local, and an http:// URL will try to load ra_dav.