Eclipse spelling engine does not exist

Question

I\'m using Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) with CDT 5 on Windows.

When the integrated spell checker doesn\'t know some word, it proposes (among others) the option to add the

Answer 1

The CDT version of Ganymede apparently shipped improperly configured. After playing around for a while, I have come up with the following steps that fix the problem.

1. Export your Eclipse preferences (File > Export > General > Preferences).
2. Open the exported file in a text editor.

3. Find the line that says

   /instance/org.eclipse.ui.editors/spellingEngine=org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.text.spelling.DefaultSpellingEngine

4. Change it to

   /instance/org.eclipse.ui.editors/spellingEngine=org.eclipse.cdt.internal.ui.text.spelling.CSpellingEngine

5. Save the preferences file.

6. Import the preferences back into Eclipse (File > Import > General > Preferences).

You should now be able to access the Spelling configuration page as seen above.

Note: if you want to add a custom dictionary, Eclipse must be able to access and open the file (i.e. it must exist - an empty file will work)