What is the accepted pattern for an application that can be run as a service or as a console application

Question

I have a project that is deployed to production as a windows service. However for local development purposes it would be useful to run it as a console application. At the moment

Answer 1

I suspect your test project was configured as a windows exe, not a console exe. With a windows exe Console.ReadLine will return immediately.

To have a console exe that works both as a service and at the command line, start it as a service project (in Visual Studio) - and add a check on Environment.UserInteractive - i.e.

static void Main() {
    if(Environment.UserInteractive) {
        // code that starts the listener and waits on ReadLine
    } else {
        // run the service code that the VS template injected
    }
}

You can of course also use a command line switch. I have example on microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp that acts as:

• an installer / uninstaller
• a service
• a console-mode app

depending on the switches