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If your Windows program needs to run permanently in the background, and you want it to be started automatically after system booting, then you need to register it as a system service.
Unfortunately, making a program that can be registered as a system service is not an easy task. First, the propgram must be an executable binary, so you can't write it with script language like Python or virtual machine language like Java. Second, you must write it in accordance with the format of Windows Service Program, which is complecated. Refer to MS official document to see how to make a Windows Service Program.
EasyService is a small tool which can register normal program as a system service. It's only 37KB. You can write your program in normal way with whatever language you like, and register it as a system servie, then it will be started automatically after system booting, runs permanently in the background, and keeps runnning even after you logout the system.
If you need to deploy website server, api server or other server that runs permanently in the background in Windows, EasyService will be a very usefull tool.
Download the source and binary of EasyService, extract it. Then right click bin/register-this-path.bat , run with Administrator to add the path of bin directory to system path. Or add it manual.
Reopen My Computer, open a terminal somewhere, run command *** svc -v *** to check whether the installation is successful.
(1) Write and test your program. EasyService has only one mandatory requirement and a recommendation to your program:
mandatory requirement: the program runs permanently
recommendation: the program exits in 5 seconds when receives data "exit" in its stdin
Typical programs are: index.js (nodejs version), main.py (Python version), and SampleWorker.cs。
(2) Open a terminal with administrator, run *svc create hello-svc to create a template project directory hello-svc.
(3) Open hello-svc/svc.conf , edit configurations:
# service's name, DO NOT conflict with existed services
ServiceName: hello-svc
# program and command line arguments
Worker: sample-worker.exe
# working directory where you want to run the program, make sure this diretory exists
WorkingDir: worker
# output of the program will be written to this directory, make sure this diretory exists
OutFileDir: outfiles
# output encoding of the program, leave empty if you are not sure
WorkerEncoding:
(4) Cd to hello-svc:
a. run svc check to check configurations
b. run svc test-worker to test your program (the Worker)
If everything are fine:
c. run svc install to register and start a system service. Now your program is running in the background.
d. run svc stop|start|restart|remove to stop, start, restart and remove the service.
To register multiple services, just run svc create your-project-name to create multiple template project directories, edit configurations, and run svc check|test-worker|install|... .
Actually, EasyService registers himself (svc.exe) as a system service. When this service starts, he reads configurations in svc.conf and creates a child process to run the program (the Worker), then monitors the child process and re-creates one if it stops running. When this service stops (or its memory exceeds a specific value), he writes data "exit" to the stdin of the child process and wait for it to exit, and terminates the child process if waitting time exceeds 5 seconds.
Source code of EasyService are in src 。