winsw

Windows Service Wrapper in a permissive license

WinSW is an executable binary, which can be used to wrap and manage a custom process as a Windows service. Once you download the installation package, you can rename WinSW.exe to any name, e.g. MyService.exe.

We are actively developing WinSW v3. Please refer to the v2 branch for previous version documentation.

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Why?

See the project manifest.

Supported platforms

WinSW offers executables for .NET Framework 2.0, 4.0 and 4.6.1. It can run on Windows platforms which have these versions of .NET Framework installed. For systems without .NET Framework, the project provides native 64-bit and 32-bit executables based on .NET Core.

More executables can be added upon request.

Download

WinSW binaries are available on GitHub Releases and NuGet.

Alternative sources:

• Maven packaging for executables, hosted by the Jenkins project. Binaries are available here.

Usage

WinSW is being managed by the XML configuration file.

Your renamed WinSW.exe binary also accepts the following commands:

• install

Install the service to Windows Service Controller. This command requires some preliminary steps described in the Installation guide.

• uninstall

Uninstall the service. The opposite operation of above.

• start

Start the service. The service must have already been installed.

• stop

Stop the service.

• stopwait

Stop the service and wait until it's actually stopped.

• restart

Restart the service. If the service is not currently running, this command acts like start.

• status

Check the current status of the service.

• This command prints one line to the console.
  • NonExistent indicates the service is not currently installed
  • Started to indicate the service is currently running
  • Stopped to indicate that the service is installed but not currently running.

Most commands require Administrator privileges to execute. Since 2.8, WinSW will prompt for UAC in non-elevated sessions.

Documentation

User documentation:

• Installation guide - Describes the installation process for different systems and .NET versions
• Migration guide - Migrate to WinSW 3.x.
• Configuration:
  • Main XML configuration file
  • EXE configuration file
  • Logging and error reporting
  • Extensions
• Use-cases:
  • Self-restarting services
  • Deferred file operations

Developer documentation:

• Developer guide

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! No Contributor License Agreement is needed, just submit your pull requests. See the contributing guidelines for more information.

License

WinSW is licensed under the MIT license.