Installing windows service from another app

Question

In my VS solution I have two projects: a windows service and a win app with one form and two buttons (install/uninstall and start/stop). I have followed Matt Davis tutorial

How to make a .NET Windows Service start right after the installation?

for creating ProjectInstaller, now I am confused how to actually fire up installation upon button click, which is in another project (win app). Id appreciate any help.

Answer 1

This is untested but if you add a reference in the win app to System.Configuration.Install . This assembly has all the code in the to install services. Then from code in your win app you can add something like this:

public void InstallService(string pathToAssembly)
{
    System.Configuration.Install.ManagedInstallerClass.InstallHelper(new string[] { pathToAssembly });
}

To use it, you only need to know the path to the exe file of your service that inherits from ServiceBase .

Answer 2

My tutorial is geared to install the service from the command line, not from another application. That said, I think it'd be easy enough to do the following (although I have not tested it):

string pathToServiceExecutable = ...;  // specify the full path to your service
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(pathToServiceExecutable, "-install");