Per the VM team's request, in JDK-8222110, we added an experimental option to javac wherein it would tolerate cycles in primitive class membership declarations.

This was when things were still in flux - JEP 401 has categorical wording that

"No instance field may have a primitive value type (see below) that depends—directly or indirectly—on the declaring class. In other words, with the exception of reference-typed fields, the class must allow for flat, fixed-size layouts without cycles."

and so it would seem reasonable that this must be diagnosed at compile time.

Frederic confirmed that the option -XDallowValueMemberCycles is not depended on anymore by hotspot and so can be purged.