Nowadays, Infinispan has access to the filter describing paths that are relevant for indexing (org.hibernate.search.mapper.pojo.mapping.building.spi.PojoTypeExtendedMappingCollector#dirtyFilter).

So, assuming Infinispan is able to compare the before/after value and build a list of changed paths, it can just call boolean needsReindexing = dirtyFilter.filter(paths) != null;.

Infinispan is actually in a much better position to do that kind of diff, so I think it makes more sense to do it that way.

Closing.