They don't allow the svn socket here so "svn co ..." failes.  I am trying to use the http protocol to do the checkout and I get the following:

[m@localhost src]$ !1128
svn co http://http.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk kamikaze
svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/openwrt/trunk'
svn: PROPFIND of '/openwrt/trunk': 405 Not Allowed (http://http.openwrt.org)
[m@localhost src]$ svn co https://http.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk kamikaze
svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/openwrt/trunk'
svn: PROPFIND of '/openwrt/trunk': 405 Not Allowed (https://http.openwrt.org)
[m@localhost src]$

how does one checkout openwrt using http??

Apparently they don't allow access that way.

Unless you need to build the image yourself, you could try working with a snapshot from http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/.

The svn checkout url changed a while ago. You need to use svn:// instead of http:// .

~ JoW