Console.WriteLine() inside a Windows Service?
If you use the System.Diagnostics.Trace functionality, you can redirect the output using the listeners and switches. If you compile with the TRACE symbol, then code will be included. If you don't add the TRACE, then it won't be compiled into the project.
If you run your services as console for debugging, the Trace will output to the console by default. I've taken to using Trace instead of Debug or Console writes since I can, from the config file, output the trace information to any combination of files, screen, database, etc.
No, the console class will safely write to the STDOUT, but you will just not see the output.
The output will simply be discarded.
In a Windows Service there is no Console so Console.Write* output is discarded. There are a number of alternatives:
- The System.Diagnostics.Trace class has a similar interface to the Console class so you could migrate your code quite easily to this.
- It can then be configured to output to a file. You can use the System.Diagnostics.EventLog class to write to the Event Log which you can then monitor using Event Viewer.
- You can use the third-party open-source log4net library which is very flexible.