Windows Servicify

A .NET CLI tool that wraps any script or executable as a Windows Service. It configures, installs, and monitors processes as Windows services with automatic restart and logging.

Installation

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases. Extract the ZIP file to a folder of your choice.

Requirements: Windows 10/11 or Windows Server 2016+. No .NET runtime installation needed (self-contained executable).

Usage

Setting up and starting a Windows service

Lets say we have a PowerShell script that we want to run continuously in the background.

After obtaining the exe file we copy it to a separate folder. There we run:

WindowsServicify.exe --configure

Then the application will ask us several questions that we need to answer:

Enter the service name you'd like: _
Enter the display name you'd like: _
Enter the service description you'd like: _
Enter the command you'd like to execute: _
Working directory for the command: _

These values will be written into a config.json file in the same folder the exe is in.

After that we have the following commands available:

WindowsServicify.exe --install
WindowsServicify.exe --uninstall
WindowsServicify.exe --testrun

• --install will install the Windows service (per default with local system as a user and as disabled, but you know you can change these settings in the service manager once the service is there...)
• --uninstall will remove our service from the services
• --testrun will start the application in console mode. Everything else is the same. This way you can have a look at all the outputs.

Everything else can be configured using the normal Windows mechanisms.

Example Config File

{
  "ServiceName": "TestService",
  "DisplayName": "TestService1",
  "Description": "",
  "Command": "powershell.exe",
  "WorkingDirectory": "C:\\Scripts",
  "Arguments": "-File HelloWorld.ps1"
}

Logging

The application will automatically create log files. It will keep 7 days, older logs will automatically be deleted. Each log file is named by the date yyyy-MM-dd.log. The log files contain all the script output with date/timestamps in front of each line like so:

  - [2023-01-01 10:35:23] Hello world

About the execution

The Windows service will, when started,

• execute the named command line in the named working directory.
• It will continuously watch it.
• When the process crashes or stops, it will log the crash and automatically restart the process.
• All outputs of the process are written into the log files.

Alternatives

• WinSW -- XML-based configuration, mature project
• Shawl -- Rust-based, minimal
• NSSM -- GUI-based, long-established

Development

Prerequisites: .NET 10.0 SDK

# Build
dotnet build Source/WindowsServicify/WindowsServicify.sln

# Run tests
dotnet test Source/WindowsServicify/WindowsServicify.sln

# Run tests with coverage
dotnet test Source/WindowsServicify/WindowsServicify.sln --collect:"XPlat Code Coverage" --settings Source/WindowsServicify/WindowsServicify.Domain.Tests/coverlet.runsettings

License

MIT