@Avi Romanoff: I have just tried this on another computer, couldn't reproduce it either. One small note: You mentioned in your testcase editing SourceManager.vala, is that SearchManager.vala, as I can't find a SourceManager.vala file in scratch? SearchManager.vala was the file I have tried with, and successfully replaced all occurrences of private with public, without a crash.
@Avi Romanoff: I have just tried this on another computer, couldn't reproduce it either. One small note: You mentioned in your testcase editing SourceManager.vala, is that SearchManager.vala, as I can't find a SourceManager.vala file in scratch? SearchManager.vala was the file I have tried with, and successfully replaced all occurrences of private with public, without a crash.