removing static instances of Hibernate types

[gavinking]

So the ability to write, say, StringType.INSTANCE in Hibernate is something so ancient I think it actually predates not just annotations by even XML mappings!

Which means that removing this ability would break some user code.

Nevertheless, I think the amount of problems it's caused in the internal implementation of Hibernate is.... well, uff, I actually would rather not think about that.

And so now that people have had a really long time to migrate away from most the older APIs that encourage the use of these static instances, I think we could consider removing them.

Most likely it's only really UserTypes which are still using them, and migrating UserTypes is probably not a very painful task for most users.

[sebersole]

It will be painful for sure. But I think it should be done.