winsw/docs/extensions/extensions.md

WinSW extensions

Starting from WinSW 2.0, the wrapper provides an internal extension engine and several extensions. These extensions allow to alter the behavior of the Windows service in order to setup the required service environment.

Available extensions

• Shared Directory Mapper - Allows mapping shared drives before starting the executable

Developer guide

In the current versions of WinSW the extension does not support inclusion of external extension DLLs.

Adding external extensions

The only way to create an external extension is to create a new extension DLL and then to merge this DLL into the executable using tools like ILMerge. See the example in src/Core/ServiceWrapper/winsw.csproj.

Generic extension creation guideline:

• Extension DLL should reference the WinSWCore library.
• The extension should extend the AbstractWinSWExtension class.
• The extension then can override event handlers offered by the upper class.
• The extension should implement the configuration parsing from the XmlNode.
• The extension should support disabling from the configuration file.

WinSW engine will automatically locate your extension using the class name in the XML configuration file. See configuration samples provided for the extensions in the core. For extensions from external DLLs, the className field should also specify the assembly name. It can be done via fully qualified class name or just by the ${CLASS_NAME}, ${ASSEMBLY_NAME} declaration.

Please note that in the current versions of WinSW the binary compatibility of extension APIs is not guaranteed.