Nano

The current version of nano living on DreamHost is 1.2.4, this guide will help you to upgrade to the latest version.

Getting the source
Go to http://www.nano-editor.org to download the latest source. Place it somewhere smart.. I use $HOME/src.

Next untar the archive: This will create a folder with the same name as the file.

Compiling
Enter the folder that you just untarred the source to. Run configure with the --prefix and --enable-all parameter like this: This tells the compiler that you want all the bells and whistles, and you want to install in your own folder.

Next run

You now have nano installed in $HOME/bin/nano

Running nano
You need to edit your .bash_profile file to include your own  directory first in the path. The easiest way of doing this is:

Finishing up
You probably need to log in and out to make the new PATH directive work.

Then you can try running. It should tell you the correct version (2.x.x) and not 1.2.4