[java] What is a serialVersionUID and why should I use it?

You can tell Eclipse to ignore these serialVersionUID warnings:

Window > Preferences > Java > Compiler > Errors / Warnings > Potential Programming Problems

In case you didn't know, there are a lot of other warnings you can enable in this section (or even have some reported as errors), many are very useful:

  • Potential Programming Problems: Possible accidental boolean assignment
  • Potential Programming Problems: Null pointer access
  • Unnecessary code: Local variable is never read
  • Unnecessary code: Redundant null check
  • Unnecessary code: Unnecessary cast or 'instanceof'

and many more.