Conditional Compilation to run Windows Service as an application

Conditional Compilation is a concept that has been around since C and C++. The idea is that you can define variables, control flow, etc for what gets compiled and what does not.

This concept can be illustrated by looking at testing of Windows Services in Visual Studio 2005. It is time consuming and just no fun to write code as a Windows Service as it cannot be run directly in Visual Studio. The solution I propose is to use Conditional Compilation to allow the Windows Service to be ran as a Windows Service or Windows Form Application. To do this, see below. // NOTE: Add RunAsApp to Conditional Compiler Symbols under the Build tab on the Project properties. #if (RunAsApp) // To test as an app MyServicee app = new MyService(); Application.Run(app); #else // To test as a Service ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun; ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new MyService() }; ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);