Windows Service Template for Visual Studio 2017

Question

The Windows Service Template no longer displays by-default for new projects in Visual Studio 2017....and the installer has no 'search' capability.

All this AZURE stuff is great, but I still gotta do normal 'on-prem' work too...and I hate maintaining 2 versions of Visual Studio.

Any thoughts here?

Answer 1

Just checked here. I see project "Windows Service (.NET Framework)" under the Windows Classic Desktop folder under Visual C#.

(Visual Basic has a similar entry.)

Only some templates are shown in parent folders, for more specialist templates you need to be more specific.

But also the search finds both.

NB I selected ".NET Desktop" workload on install, which I see you have not.

Answer 2

VS2017 --> New project --> Visual Basic or Visual C# --> Windows Classic Desktop --> Windows Service

Answer 3

Check the .NET desktop development option in the installer, then click Modify.

Answer 4

Also check out this recent post (currently dated 2017-3-30) from MS to do it without the project template:

How to: Write Services Programmatically

The key points are as follows:

• Create a new project
• Add "System.dll" and "System.ServiceProcess.dll" as References
• Create a class inheriting from ServiceBase and create a Program.cs with Main exactly like the template project does

Answer 5

If you are talking Windows Template Studio Universal then You have to install the extension in Visual Studio.

Go to Tools menu >> Extensions & Updates >> Online >>then search for Windows Template Studio

OR go to https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WASTeamAccount.WindowsTemplateStudio#overview