Hi Param R.,
To answer your question:
Is there a way to tell installutil.exe to give it a
new name in services.msc?
No. Because the InstallUtil doesn't actually do the installation, it just
calls the project installer class inside your assembly and let the
installer class do the job.
By understanding how it works, here is a way to change the service name
without re-compiling the project after its been distributed, please follow
the steps to make some changes to your service project:
1. Add an App.Config file to your project (if there isn't already one).
2. Add a setting called ServiceName into the App.Config file, so it looks
like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="ServiceName" value="CoolService"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
3. Add a new class called Util looks like this:
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Reflection;
internal static class Util
{
private static string serviceName = null;
/// <summary>
/// Extracts the Service Name from config file.
/// </summary>
public static string ServiceName
{
get
{
if (serviceName == null)
{
Configuration config =
ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
serviceName =
config.AppSettings.Settings["ServiceName"].Value;
}
return serviceName;
}
}
}
4. In your service class, add code to set the Service Name on the fly:
public partial class MyCSService : ServiceBase
{
public MyCSService()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Set the ServiceName on the fly.
this.ServiceName = Util.ServiceName;
}
....
}
5. In your ProjectInstaller class code, add code to set the Service Name
to
the ServiceInstaller on the fly:
[RunInstaller(true)]
public partial class ProjectInstaller : Installer
{
public ProjectInstaller()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Here, serviceInstaller1 is the name of my ServiceInstaller.
this.serviceInstaller1.ServiceName = Util.ServiceName;
}
}
6. Re-compile your project.
Now when you call InstallUtil on your service EXE, the installer class
will
extract the service name from the exe config file on the fly, and use that
name as the service name. In this sample, the name is "CoolService". So
you
can copy the same EXE and Config file to different folders and by just
changing the Config file's setting, you can have multiple instances of the
same service app with different names.
Hope this helps. If you have any further questions regarding this
question,
please don't hesitate to let me know.
Regards,
Jie Wang
Microsoft Online Community Support
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