Every now and then, I get this error in one of my Eclipse projects:

> 
> Faceted project metadata file "/project/.settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.xml" could not be read.
> 
> 
> 

This is a team project using Git. The ".settings" directory does not exist at all.

I'm not sure what project "facets" in Eclipse really are. Does anyone know what this error means or how to fix it?