C# ClickOnce deployment for Windows Services?

Question

What are some best practices for being able to deploy a Windows service that will have to be updated?

I have a Windows service that I will be deploying but might require some debugging and new versions during the beta process. What is the best way to handle that? Ideally, I'd like to find a ClickOnce-style deployment solution for Windows services but my understanding is that this does not exist. What is the closest I can get to ClickOnce for a Windows service?

Answer 1

A simple solution that I use is to merely stop the service and x-copy the files from my bin folder into the service folder.

A batch file to stop the service then copy the files should be easy to throw together.

Net stop myService
xcopy \\myServerWithFiles\*.* c:\WhereverTheServiceFilesAre
net start myService