ASP.NET Core 6 app not able to find UseWindowsService

March 1, 2022

My objective is to run an ASP.NET Core 6 app as Windows service in the simplest way, which I understood to use the code shown below.

I have included both of these lines (though only the top should be necessary):

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.WindowsServices;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices;

and installed the nuget packages:

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices" Version="6.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.WindowsServices" Version="6.0.0" />

But this code cannot resolve .UseWindowsService() when using IWebHostBuilder:

    public static IWebHostBuilder CreateWebHostBuilder(string[] args) =>
        WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
            .UseConfiguration(Configuration)
            .ConfigureServices(ConfigureServices)
            .UseUrls(Configuration.GetBindHostUrl())
            .UseStartup<Startup>()
            .UseWindowsService();   // not found

The error I get is:

‘IWebHostBuilder’ does not contain a definition for ‘UseWindowsService’ and the best extension method overload ‘WindowsServiceLifetimeHostBuilderExtensions.UseWindowsService(IHostBuilder)’ requires a receiver of type ‘IHostBuilder’

What am I missing here?

>Solution :

Instead of using the WebHost, you could try to use the more generic IHostBuilder:

 var host = Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
                .UseWindowsService()
                .UseSystemd()
                .ConfigureWebHostDefaults(webbuilder =>
                {
                    //Configure here your WebHost. For example Startup;
                    webbuilder.UseStartup<Startup>();
            });