This issue tracks adding @Generated to java.lang.annotation along the lines of javax.annotation.Generated in JSR 250 (Common Annotations).

On the surface then java.lang.annotation is not the right place for this as that package was meant for annotations that directly support the language's annotation facility. However, the scope of the package changed in Java SE 8 with the introduction of @Native and so adding @Generated may not be too bad.

As background, Java SE defines, since Java SE 6, a small subset of the JSR-250 annotations for use by the web service stack. The addition of these annotations have been highly problematic and the source of many split package issues. In the long term then the proposal is to drop this module from Java SE, the first step being to deprecate it in Java SE 9. In addition, the proposal for JDK 9 is to not resolve the EE modules by default. Combined, it means disruption for a number of java source code generators that uses this annotation.The proposal here provides a migration path for tools that don't care about the other JSR-250 defined annotations and don't wish to put the Java EE version of this API on the class path or module path.

Specification of the existing @Generated annotation, for reference: http://download.java.net/java/jdk9/docs/api/javax/annotation/Generated.html