How to bundle Electron application and windows service together?

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I am very new with electron application. I need some help with election installation. I have an Electron desktop application and a windows service. I can start and stop my pre installed services by using sudo-prompt package. I am creating windows installer by using electron-winstaller package. But I want to bundle my windows service along with my electron application. My requirement is when I install my electron package then it should install my service also, when I uninstall my package then that service should be uninstalled.

Please help me out. Any clue, Any suggestions will be appreciated. If you think this should be achieved with something else then please do suggest me.

electron-packager electron windows-services windows-installer packaging
1 Answers

Electron's windows installer packager strikes me a specific case tool that would likely hit limitations in scenarios like this. I would use a general case tool instead such as the Free and Open Source Windows Installer XML Toolset aka WiX. I would also use with that another FOSS application called Industrial Strength Windows Installer XML aka IsWiX.

WiX allows you to describe and build MSI databases using an XML/XSD domain specific language. It supports MSBuild for easy integration with your CI/CD pipeline. IsWiX* is a set of project templates and graphical designers that provide an opinionated project structuring (scaffolding) and greatly speeds up the learning curve and implementation. For example, this installer you describe could be done without writing a single line of XML.

For more information see: https://github.com/iswix-llc/iswix-tutorials

The desktop-application and windows-service tutorials should** show you everything you need to know to author this installer. Basically follow the desktop-application all the way through and then skip to the final portion of the windows-service tutorial where you define the windows service.

  • I'm the maintainer of IsWiX

** This assumes your service exe is a proper Windows service that interfaces with the windows service control manager. If it's really just a console app that runs as a service you will need to include a program such as srvany.exe. This will require one line of hand crafted XML to extended the service definition in the registry with the proper command line value to be passed to your exe. An example can be found here: Wix installer to replace INSTSRV and SRVANY for user defined service installation

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