Usage of @Generated annotation

Question

I'm gonna ask may be a little philosophic question.

There's annotation in Java - @Generated .
I want to understand a good style of using it.

For example, if I've created implementation of Serializable and generated serialVersionUID in Eclipse.
- Do I need to put @Generated before the serial field or it's unnecessary fanaticism?
- If I do then for what purposes will it be used despite simple info for other developers?
- And finally, what code generator for "value" field I'm using here?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

1. I would think this is unnecessary fanaticism regarding to a field.
2. An IDE could make @Generated code readonly (since it's bad practice to hand-edit generated code) and/or remove warnings for it, but I do not know of any one doing it.
3. When I put this annotation on Eclipse-generated methods (hashCode, equals, toString), I just put "Eclipse", although "org.eclipse.Eclipse" might be better.

Of course, the ideal would be Eclipse to put itself this annotation when it generates code.