Windows Service Test Form

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Introduction

There are a few articles on the internet on debugging Windows Services in VS 2005. The official method is to attach a debugger to the service process once it has started. This makes it difficult to step through a service's startup process. The article, Debugging Windows Services under Visual Studio .NET, by Lee Humphries shows how to isolate individual methods using the DEBUG preprocessor directive. Here, we go a step further and create a test form as a sort of "service sandbox", to allow more interaction.

The ServiceTestForm keeps its own thread going, sort of like the system service manager. The difference here is that your service may not run as a system user. EventLog may not behave as expected either. It would be wise to use the static EventLog.WriteEntry instead of your EventLog instance.

Using the code

The code uses Anthony Roach’s C# Scheduler service as an example. To apply your own service, copy the embedded class ServiceTestForm into your class, and use the Main below. The form allows you to set breakpoints anywhere, including custom commands. Remember that command IDs below 128 are reserved for system commands.

static void Main()
{
   #if DEBUG
      System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(
         new ServiceTestForm(new ScheduleService()));
   #else
      System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase.Run(
         new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase[] { new ScheduleService() });
   #endif
}

Points of interest

At first, I thought it would be nice to override ServiceBase.EventLog properties in another preprocessor directive. Maybe it could redirect EventLog entries to the TextBox, but it turns out EventLog.WriteLine isn't virtual. If anybody has a better solution to this, please forumize it and Zip me an email.