Adding a Windows service using sc
The ‘sc
‘ utility can be used to create, delete or edit a Windows service. It can be used for any executables (as opposed to installutil
, which can only be used for .Net services). Its help is available using sc /help
(and is also available on MSDN); however, I found the output slightly confusing, so for my own reference here’s an example for creating a service for the Subversion server:
sc create svnserve binPath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\"
--service -r \"c:\svn_repository\" --listen-port \"3690\"" DisplayName= "Subversion Server"
This passes two parameters, the binPath and the DisplayName (the rest are the directives Subversion expects when running as a service). The trick here is the space between the ‘=’ sign after the parameter name and the parameter value; the service won’t be installed otherwise.