Question

Objective: In support of a Windows Service that may have multiple instances on a single machine, use a Setup Project to create an MSI capable of:

1. Receiving user input for Service Name
2. Installing service
3. Serializing Service Name from 1 (so that the proper name can be used in logging and uninstall)

My initial hope was to set Service Name in App.config (and then retrieve it during uninstall upon instantiation of the ServiceInstaller. This seems to have been naive, because it is not accessible during the install.

If MyInstaller extends Installer, it can call base.Install(); however, my attempts to write to app.config (within MyInstaller.Install() and after base.Install()) are inneffective.

So while the service can be installed with a custom Service Name, that name is not serialized and the installer is most displeased upon uninstall.

How should this be done?

Answer 1

You can specify parameters to installer actions, so collect the service name, and pass it as a parameter to the action. Then, in the Installer class, you can override Install() and access it via base.Context.Parameters. That’s how you get the value. Having obtained that value and used it, you put it in the stateSaver IDictionary parameter so that if you override Uninstall() you can find out what value was used on install.