i changed to use Set instead of List and i also added a simple areEqual method (for primitives and enums it uses == and for Simple data types it calls equals. currently it does the same for other objects, but im thinking of changing this to use the Type class you mentioned. does that sound ok?

After thinking about it some more I don't think embedding the Types into the enhanced entity is a feasible option. What I think might make some sense would be to use the attribute Types when doing the enhancement for the sole purpose of determining mutability (Type#isMutable). Mutability would tell us the proper way to test equality.

Overall I think, for now, using == for enums and primitives and equals for Object references is going to be the best option. One specific case where this could be a problem is with composite values (JPA Embeddables). For the moment we'd have to rely on the composite/embeddable implementing equals properly. Eventually the plan is to also enhance these composite classes.