Add commandline arguments to service installer c#

Question

I am working on an application which starts as a service but only if a commandline switch tells it to (otherwise a standard form is opened). So when the service is started by Windows at bootup, it must pass this commandline option or the service fails to start.

I would like to have the installer (ServiceProcessInstaller) add a commandline option so that when the service is started it adds the commandline option to the command.

Example: MyService.exe -commandlineoption

I thought this was what the ServiceProcessorInstaller.Context property was for, but that is for the arguments that were executed on InstallUtil.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

A service is only installed once per release. It sounds like you are talking about passing a command line argument to the service when it's started.

You can pass command line arguments to the service when you start it using the ServiceController.Start method:

using (var controller = new ServiceController("servicename")) {
    controller.Start(arg0, arg1);
}

Answer 2

When I've added command-line options to services, I've always defaulted to running as a service. However, I know that the opposite is possible because it's how SvcHost works: it's an EXE that's always configured to load DLL's as services.