Why can we not use __traits across protection?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 4/3/19 5:19 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 April 2019 at 14:56:38 UTC, Alex wrote:
>> Module X:
>>
>> class x
>> {
>>    private int x;
>> }
>>
>> Module Y:
>>
>> import X;
>>
>> moduleName!(x.x);
>>
>> or
>>
>> __traits(getProtection, x.x);
>>
>> Deprecation: `X.x.x.x` is not visible from module `Y`
>> Error: class `X.x.x` member `x` is not accessible
>>
>> My use case is a little more complicated but I have two issues.
> 
> __traits(getProtection, __traits(getMember, x, "x")) works. You just 
> can't spell "x.x" anywhere.
> 

So this is quite unintuitive. The compiler should realize here you are 
just checking protection, and forego the protection check on the 
expression. I.e. there should be a special exception to visibility 
checking inside __traits(getProtection, ...).

-Steve