[Lynne]

OK, admittedly, I've never done this, but I can read the page that on the mysql site. It says:

To override the default stopword list, set the ft_stopword_file system variable. (See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”.) The variable value should be the path name of the file containing the stopword list, or the empty string to disable stopword filtering. After changing the value of this variable or the contents of the stopword file, restart the server and rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes.

You can set the variable either while the system is running (I think just SET xxxxx, I can't remember exactly) or in the my.cnf file. Then restart. I don't see where you are seeing anything about recompiling.