Allow @Rule annotation on non-public fields

[mknittig]

I really don't see why fields with a @rule annotations must be public and it's quite easy to fix...

[Yishai]

I agree. It is a strange requirement/limitation.

[aisrael]

I'm voting this up, but only because I've gotten used to the DI/Spring (and other frameworks) way of 'peering' into the private internals of a class and perusing the members therein. On the other hand, I can see how sticking to public members avoids potential issues when using reflection when running under a security manager. One more reason for supporting non-public @Rules (and @Before/@After methods): we don't have to suppress Checkstyle's VisibilityModifier check.

[dlindner]

I agree, too. In the mailing list, there is already a working patch for this:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/junit/message/22445

[dsaff]

Tests that grab private members reflectively can fail when run under security managers and runtimes that prevent such access, so we push test writers to make their tests most generally useful. Since the only "client" of a JUnit test class is the framework itself, I haven't seen a big loss in design from this requirement. Please bring this up on junit@yahoogroups.com if you strongly disagree, so we can hear from both sides. Thanks.