Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
Against Natures
Eclipse project natures seem to be only part way developed.
The basic idea of a "project nature" sounds great. A project nature is a set of entries in the actions that eclipse may apply to an Eclipse project. For example (an the only example I know) the action of building the project can be one action associated with a project. If you want to add a builder to a project at the time the project is defined, then the only mechanism seems to be to create a project nature.
Unfortunately Eclipse has no way to list the project natures in the UI. So how do you know if they are added?
You can add builders to projects dynamically and you can see which builder are added by looking at the projects Properties->Builders. So for the primary purpose of project natures, binding builders to a set of file in a project, adding and removing the builder directly is more effective.
Maybe eclipse will evolve to make project natures truly dynamic. Having projects de-evolve into simply containers of files that collect natures, like Java or PlugIn, would make eclipse more dynamic and adaptable. It would also make creating projects less traumatic since you wouldn't have to worry that you created it with the wrong natures.