Creating a Windows service in delphi

Question

I have created a windows service in delphi. My code is run within ServiceExecute

procedure TMyService.ServiceExecute(Sender: TService);
 while not Terminated do
 begin
      CallSomeProcedure;  
      Sleep(1000);
      ServiceThread.ProcessRequests(false);
 end;
end;

Unfortunately, I can not get this code to run. I doesn't seem to call the procedure even when I'm debugging. The code in Myservice.exe looks like this.

begin 
    if not Application.DelayInitialize or Application.Installing then
       Application.Initialize;
    Application.CreateForm(TMyService, MyService);
    Application.Run;
end.

I can get the serviceExecute to run if I add

MyService.ServiceExecute(nil);

into MyService.exe however if I install it as a service it appears not to be running as Application.Run does nothing

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

You cannot just run the service from the IDE to debug it; in that case it will just exit. The service has to be started by the service control manager. Also, you shouldn't be calling ServiceExecute directly.

Here's documentation how to debug services.