From my notes back when I compiled 1.8.0, I had to download the
sqlite-amalgamation ZIP file and add it into the source directory.
$ cd /usr/local/src/subversion-1.8.0/
$ wget http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-amalgamation-3071501.zip
$ unzip sqlite-amalgamation-3071501.zip
$ mv sqlite-amalgamation-3071501 sqlite-amalgamation
$ rm sqlite-amalgamation-3071501.zip
Once I had the zip file unpacked into the sqlite-amalgamation
subdirectory, there were no extra options to be passed to that
./configure script. It saw it automatically.
(I have not had time yet to build 1.8.1.)
Current version of the sqlite-amalgamation ZIP can be found at:
http://www.sqlite.org/download.html