Acces to private field from nested class when the type of reference is a generic type variable with upper bound of outer class

[Peter Levart]

This code compiles with latest JDK 6 javac:

package test;

public class Outer
{
    private int outerField;

    public Outer(int outerField)
    {
        this.outerField = outerField;
    }

    public static class Inner<O extends Outer>
    {
        public int getOuterField(O outer)
        {
            return outer.outerField;
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Outer outer = new Outer(12);
        Inner<Outer> inner = new Inner<Outer>();
        System.out.println(inner.getOuterField(outer));
    }
}


... but refuses to compile with JDK 7 javac (release or latest 7u2-b08 prerelease), giving the 
following compilation failure:

src/test/Outer.java:16: error: outerField has private access in Outer
            return outer.outerField;
                        ^

even if tried with -source 1.6 -target 1.6 options.

Is this intentional or a bug?


Regards, Peter