When in the designer, if(Beans.isDesignTime() == true) is ignored, while if(Beans.isDesignTime()) is honored

[ForceRs]

I'm running WindowBuilder 1.22.0.202511270930

When in the design tab, if(Beans.isDesignTime() == true) is ignored, while if(Beans.isDesignTime() is honored.
Why is this?
Here's a simple test case:

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.beans.Beans;

import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

public class WbpIssue extends JPanel {
	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
	private JLabel lbCenter;
	private JLabel lbNorth;
	public WbpIssue() {
		setLayout(new BorderLayout(0, 0));
		if(Beans.isDesignTime() == true) {
			add(getLbNorth(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
		}
		if(Beans.isDesignTime()) {
			add(getLbCenter(), BorderLayout.CENTER);			
		}
	}
	private JLabel getLbNorth() {
		if (lbNorth == null) {
			lbNorth = new JLabel("North");
		}
		return lbNorth;
	}
	private JLabel getLbCenter() {
		if (lbCenter == null) {
			lbCenter = new JLabel("Center");
		}
		return lbCenter;
	}
}

When you load this into the editor's Design tab, the only label displayed is "Center". The "North" label is not shown.

[ptziegler]

The short answer is that Beans.isDesignTime() is a method call, while Beans.isDesignTime() == true is an expression. WindowBuilder effectively performs a static code analysis and is therefore not able to handle conditional checks.

From the specification:

Parsing begins from well defined «entry points», different for each GUI element, for example constructor for SWT Composite. Parsing continues following by directly/unconditionally accessible code, so excludes any «if» statements (both then/else branches), loops, code defined in event handlers or methods that are not invoked from «entry point».

If you think of something like Beans.isDesignTime() == veryComplicatedComputation() instead of Beans.isDesignTime() == true, this will hopefully become a little bit clearer. The parser can't possibly go through the whole method chain to calculate the return type of this method.

The reason this conditional check works for the labels is only because lazy initialization is a common creation pattern.

[ForceRs]

Super. Thanks.