What's the point of starting an app every five minutes in a watch that doesn't support Glance (ie Venu)

Taking into account that (:background) annotation is present in your code snippet I assume that you have added a background process with 5-min frequency into your app.

Whenever a background process starts, a new instance of the app starts but, unlike the main app instance, it loads only resources annotated with the (:background) annotation.

Yeah, background process was started for Glance to fetch its data. Is there a way to prevent a background process for spawning if the watch doesn't support Glance?

Theoretically, you may have two different getInitialView() methods. One with a declaration of BG process schedule and another - without. You may put 2 different annotations on these methods based on the concrete product ID, and then exclude these methods from the build for the concrete device as described here:
https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/build-configuration/#feelingexcluded

Or you may simply put some boolean flag into device-specific string resources. For some devices it will be true, for others - false. Then, basing on this flag, you may schedule or not background process inside the getInitialView() method.

Thanks. That gave me an idea. Using excludeAnnotations, I changed the glance enabled code to this

(:background)
class TeslaLink extends App.AppBase {

    function initialize() {
        AppBase.initialize();
    }

    (:can_glance)
    function getServiceDelegate(){
        return [ new MyServiceDelegate() ];
    }

    // This fires when the background service returns
    (:can_glance)
    function onBackgroundData(data) {
        Application.getApp().setProperty("status", data["status"]);
        Ui.requestUpdate();
    }  

    (:glance, :can_glance)
    function getGlanceView() {
        Application.getApp().setProperty("canGlance", true);
        Background.registerForTemporalEvent(new Time.Duration(60*5));
        return [ new GlanceView() ];
    }
:
:

(:background, :can_glance)
class MyServiceDelegate extends System.ServiceDelegate {

    var _token;
    var _tesla;
    var _vehicle_id;

    function initialize() {
        System.ServiceDelegate.initialize();
:
:

(:glance, :can_glance)
class GlanceView extends Ui.GlanceView {
	
  function initialize() {
    GlanceView.initialize();
  }
:
:

And made the following monkey.jungle file

project.manifest = manifest.xml
base.excludeAnnotations = can_glance
fenix7.excludeAnnotations = cant_glance

Breakpoints in the 'glance' code while running as a Venu are disabled and are enabled and hit while running as a Fenix 7.

One more question, on the app, background service is only required for glancing. So, is there a way to allow Background permission per devices? So devices without glance won't have that permission? I noticed that for the Venu, although I disable all the ':background' tag in the source file, since the background permission was given, the following happened at compile:

WARNING: venu: The background permission was enabled but no source code was annotated. The entire application will be loaded as a background process. (background application)

Yikes.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, no. Permissions can be declared in the manifest file only. 1 manifest = 1 application. So, you need to have totally separate applications in the IQ store with different permissions.

But I guess you may ignore that warning message. Since you don't have a backgrounding schedule for non-Fenix devices, your "entire" background app instance will never be ever started.

If you only want the background to run if in a blance, and at most 1 time, do this.

in your AppBase, in getGlanceView() do

Background.registerForTemporalEvent(new Time.Duration(5 * 60));

and then in onStop(), do

Background.deleteTemporalEvent();

One thing to consider, is WatchUi.requestUpdate() may do nothing on devices with liveUpdates=false;

Also, the background may not run when you are looking at the glance.  It has to be 5 minutes or more since the last time it ran.

Not sure I understand what that means

"Since you don't have a backgrounding schedule for non-Fenix devices, your "entire" background app instance will never be ever started"

Glance has to get the live vehicle charge level so it has to run at its 5 minutes interval