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

My advise? Put all your logic for your service in a separate assembly. (A class library or DLL.) Then create one project as service which references your class library and puts the code to use as services. Create a second console project which also references your class library but which will make it available as a console application. You would end up with three different projects in your solution but it does allow you to keep things separate. Actually, this would make it possible to extend your service in several other shapes too. You could, for example, create a 4th project as a web service and thus call your service from a web browser on a client system. Because the software logic is separated from the usage logic, you gain lots of control over it.

Be aware that a service will possibly run with more limitations than a console application. In general, services don't have network access by default, don't have a monitor assigned to them to display error messages and in general run with a limited user account or system account. Your service might work as a console yet fail as a service because of this.