Get version information of the installed service?

Question

I want to programmatically check if the latest version of my Windows service is installed. I have:

var ctl = ServiceController.GetServices().Where(s => s.ServiceName == "MyService").FirstOrDefault(); if (ctl != null) { // now what? } 

I don’t see anything in the ServiceController interface, which will tell me the version number. How to do it?

Answer 1

I am afraid that there is no way to get the executable path from the registry, because ServiceController does not provide this information.

Here is an example I created earlier:

 private static string GetExecutablePathForService(string serviceName, RegistryView registryView, bool throwErrorIfNonExisting) { string registryPath = @"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\" + serviceName; RegistryKey key = RegistryKey.OpenBaseKey(RegistryHive.LocalMachine, registryView).OpenSubKey(registryPath); if(key==null) { if (throwErrorIfNonExisting) throw new ArgumentException("Non-existent service: " + serviceName, "serviceName"); else return null; } string value = key.GetValue("ImagePath").ToString(); key.Close(); if(value.StartsWith("\"")) { value = Regex.Match(value, "\"([^\"]+)\"").Groups[1].Value; } return Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(value); } 

After getting the exe path, just use the FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo(exePath) class to get the version.

Answer 2

If you own the service, you can put version information in DisplayName , for example. DisplayName="MyService 2017.06.28.1517" . This allows you to find an existing installation of your service and analyze version information:

 var ctl = ServiceController .GetServices() .FirstOrDefault(s => s.ServiceName == "MyService"); if (ctl != null) { // get version substring, you might have your own style. string substr = s.DisplayName.SubString("MyService".Length); Version installedVersion = new Version(substr); // do stuff, eg check if installed version is newer than current assembly. } 

This can be useful if you want to avoid the registry. The problem is that service entries can go to different parts of the registry depending on the installation procedure.

Answer 3

If you are talking about getting the current version of your service automatically from the assembly properties, then you can configure a property, such as below, in your ServiceBase class.

 public static string ServiceVersion { get; private set; } 

Then in your OnStart method add the following ...

 ServiceVersion = typeof(Program).Assembly.GetName().Version.ToString(); 

Full example

 using System.Diagnostics; using System.ServiceProcess; public partial class VaultServerUtilities : ServiceBase { public static string ServiceVersion { get; private set; } public VaultServerUtilities() { InitializeComponent(); VSUEventLog = new EventLog(); if (!EventLog.SourceExists("Vault Server Utilities")) { EventLog.CreateEventSource("Vault Server Utilities", "Service Log"); } VSUEventLog.Source = "Vault Server Utilities"; VSUEventLog.Log = "Service Log"; } protected override void OnStart(string[] args) { ServiceVersion = typeof(Program).Assembly.GetName().Version.ToString(); VSUEventLog.WriteEntry(string.Format("Vault Server Utilities v{0} has started successfully.", ServiceVersion)); } protected override void OnStop() { VSUEventLog.WriteEntry(string.Format("Vault Server Utilities v{0} has be shutdown.", ServiceVersion)); } } 

In the above example, my event log displays the current version of my service ...