How do I configure the name of a Windows service upon installation (or easily at compile time)?

Question

I've created a Windows service in C#, installed it on a server and it is running fine.

Now I want to install the same service again, but running from a different working directory, having a different config file etc. Thus, I would like to have two (or more) instances of the same service running simultaneously. Initially, this isn't possible since the installer will complain that there's already a service with the given name installed.

I can overcome this by changing my code, setting the ServiceBase.ServiceName property to a new value, then recompiling and running InstallUtil.exe again. However, I would much prefer if I could set the service name at install-time, i.e. ideally I would do something like

InstallUtil.exe /i /servicename="MyService Instance 2" MyService.exe

If this isn't achievable (I very much doubt it), I would like to be able to inject the service name when I build the service. I thought it might be possible to use some sort of build event, use a clever msbuild or nant trick or something along those lines, but I haven't got a clue.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

I tried accessing a configuration using

ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(string exePath)

in the installer, but couldn't get it to work.

Instead I decided to use System.Environment.GetCommandLineArgs() in the installer like this:

string[] commandlineArgs = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();

string servicename;
string servicedisplayname;
ParseServiceNameSwitches(
    commandlineArgs, 
    out servicename, 
    out servicedisplayname);

serviceInstaller.ServiceName = servicename;
serviceInstaller.DisplayName = servicedisplayname;

Now I can install my services using

InstallUtil.exe /i InstallableService.dll /servicename="myserviceinstance_2" /servicedisplayname="My Service Instance 2"

I wrote up a more elaborate explanation here.

Answer 2

You can't pass this in as a command line arg, since InstallUtil doesn't provide the right hooks for that.

However, you can make your service installer read the ServiceName from a config file. If you look at some code for a typical ServiceInstaller, you'll see it's just a matter of having the appropriate DisplayName and ServiceName properties setup at runtime. These could easily be read from a configuration file instead of being hard-coded.

Answer 3

Instead of using Environment.GetCommandLineArgs(); the class Installer has a property called Context from which you can access command line arguments passed to InstallUtil structured in a nice StringDictionary.