purpose of android.support.VERSION meta-data

<meta-data android:name="android.support.VERSION"... usually comes up in the context of manifest merging problems.

I'm not a fan of the various gradle hacks people do so I was wondering if something like this is safe:

<meta-data
  android:name="android.support.VERSION"
  tools:node="remove"/>

Does anyone know where android.support.VERSION is used or for what purpose?