Question

What ?
I am developing a Console Application that needs to keep running 24/7 No Matter What
Is there any way to stop a Multi-Threaded Application from getting blown up by some unhandled exception happening in “some thread somewhere” ?

Why ?
Please refrain from giving lessons like “you should manage all your exceptions”, “this should never happen” etc. I have my reasons : We are in test deployment and we need to keep this running, log exceptions, and restart all threads again. If anything unplanned happens and causes an unhandled exception to be thrown, it needs to be detected and some method called to restart all threads(atomicity is impossible due due the tier design)

This being said, I am aware it might no be possible to restart an application from “within” if it has blown because of and UnhandledException (which I already implemented).

So far, I have used Quartz.net’s FileScan Job and a Flag File to detect stuff like that and restart the application from outwards. But this sounds hacky to me. I would like to find something cleaner and less quick and dirty.

DownVoting / Sniping Warning : I KNOW this might NOT be possible “as is'”.
Please be creative/helpful rather than abruptly critic and think of this more as an “Open question”

Answer 1

You need to attach an event handler to UnhandledException event on the Current AppDomain:

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += UnhandledExceptionHandler

Inside the handler, you will have to somehow save enough state (to a file, database, etc.) for the restarted application to pass along to the new threads. Then instantiate a new instance of your Console application with a call to System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyConsoleApp.exe").

Be very careful to introduce logic to avoid a continuous loop of crash/restart/crash/restart.