Setup and Deployment: A Windows service

So I made myself a nice Windows Service in Visual Studio 2010 for some background work. As numerous sites point out, I did not forget to add a "project installer" -which seems to be required- by right clicking on the Service Design view and selecting "add installer" from the popup. Set some properties and we're good to go. That was the easy part as it turned out.

My Problem

Now it needed to be installed on client machines so I added a new project to my solution: Other Project Types -> Setup and Deployment -> Visual Studio Installer. "Been there, done that" I would think...

I added the "Primary output from myService (active)" to the file system. Just as I did countless times, for countless other apps. Organized the install information like name, company, version and so on and so forth... The usual stuff really. When build, indeed the project generates the ".msi" and "setup.exe" as expected.

Problem solved?

Right click "setup.exe" from my release folder of the setup project. "Run as administrator" to be absolutly sure the User Account Control doesn't bother me, and install! And -as expected- install ended with no problems. So cool, creating my own service... No let's see if this works...

[anxious on] Start button -> services.msc -> here's my list of services...[anxious off]

Huh? Where is it? It did install, it did! Look at the control panel -> Add remove software -> It's right there!

Problem solved!

When installing a service -it turns out- we need some extra settings in the setup project.

Right click the setup project and select "Custom actions" from the popup menu. Add the primary output from your service to Install, Commit, Rollback and uninstall.

Finally rebuild your setup -don't forget to uninstall your previous attempt- and install your new build. Now run "services.msc" and...
"There it is!" (to qoute the great Charlie Harper :)

Off course starting the service might still be a dissapointment, depending on your coding skills. But atleast it got installed!