The attached code contains a simple program which has the following symbols:

public const string EXAMPLE_NAME = "some text";
public int example_name { get; set; }

Vala accepts this as valid code (and it certainly looks valid to me) but it generates invalid C code.

The GCC error is:

/home/eric/Development/test/property_test/test.vala: In function ‘_vala_demo_properties_get_property’:
/home/eric/Development/test/property_test/test.vala:1:3: error: case label does not reduce to an integer constant
/home/eric/Development/test/property_test/test.vala: In function ‘_vala_demo_properties_set_property’:
/home/eric/Development/test/property_test/test.vala:1:3: error: case label does not reduce to an integer constant

From looking at the generated C code, the problem is pretty clear; there's a name collision between an enum and a #define:

enum  {
	DEMO_PROPERTIES_DUMMY_PROPERTY,
	DEMO_PROPERTIES_EXAMPLE_NAME
};
#define DEMO_PROPERTIES_EXAMPLE_NAME "some text"