USing Java App to create Windows Service

Question

I've just inherited a java application that needs to be installed as a service on XP and vista. It's been about 8 years since I've used windows in any form and I've never had to create a service, let alone from something like a java app (I've got a jar for the app and a single dependency jar - log4j). What is the magic necessary to make this run as a service? I've got the source, so code modifications, though preferably avoided, are possible.

Answer 1

Apache Commons Daemon is a good alternative. It has Procrun for windows services, and Jsvc for unix daemons. It uses less restrictive Apache license, and Apache Tomcat uses it as a part of itself to run on Windows and Linux! To get it work is a bit tricky, but there is an exhaustive article with working example.

Besides that, you may look at the bin\service.bat in Apache Tomcat to get an idea how to setup the service. In Tomcat they rename the Procrun binaries (prunsrv.exe -> tomcat6.exe, prunmgr.exe -> tomcat6w.exe).

Something I struggled with using Procrun, your start and stop methods must accept the parameters (String[] argv). For example "start(String[] argv)" and "stop(String[] argv)" would work, but "start()" and "stop()" would cause errors. If you can't modify those calls, consider making a bootstrapper class that can massage those calls to fit your needs