This article provides instructions on how to set up MIX as a service on Windows. As a service you can use the Windows Service manager panel to stop and start MIX, and to set it to run automatically when Windows starts. It is distributed with a permissive MIT license.

These instructions use the service wrapper (WinSW) from https://github.com/winsw. This is an active open-source project and is very easy to set up and use. There are more features available for this wrapper than the basic setup described in this article, but the basic setup should be useful for most MIX installations.

Read more about the wrapper at the bottom part of the page at https://github.com/winsw/winsw.

The first step to setting up the wrapper for MIX is to download the main executable and a configuration from https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases.

WinSW can be set up on x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) and the executable you select to download will depend on the MIX deployment Windows version and architecture. The most straightforward setup is for Windows 10+ which has .net 4.61+ installed (it will be by default on Windows 10+ systems). Download the current release (not the beta release). As of the date of this article the current release is 2.11, and version 3 is in alpha phase and probably should not be used except for experimentation. The links below are for version 2.11 and you should check if there is a later version.

The executable to download for Windows 10 (and systems using .net 4.61 or newer) is https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases/download/v2.11.0/WinSW.NET461.exe. If you are running an X86 version of Windows or an older version, please read the documentation page (link in the first section above) to understand which exe you will need.

Also download the simple configuration example (sample-minimal.xml) from https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases/download/v2.11.0/sample-minimal.xml. You can also download the more extensive (examples of every configurable property) configuration (sample-allOptions.xml) from https://github.com/winsw/winsw/releases/download/v2.11.0/sample-allOptions.xml.

Make sure you have set up the MIX runtime distribution using the instructions on this wiki page Making a Runtime Installation. Copy the executable for the service wrapper and the simple (minimal) configuration file into the MIX runtime (mixruntime) directory.

Rename the executable (i.e. WinSW.NET461.exe) to the name of the service. For MIX, rename WinSW.NET461.exe to mixruntime.exe. Rename the minimal configuration xml to match this name; change “sample-minimal.xml” to mixruntime.xml.

Edit mixruntime.xml in NotePad+ or another text only editor (such as EditPad if you do not have NotePad++).

You will see these defaults:

<!--
  MIT License
 
  Copyright (c) 2008-2020 Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Sun Microsystems, Inc., CloudBees,
  Inc., Oleg Nenashev and other contributors
 
  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
  of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
  in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
  to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
  copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
  furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 
  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
  copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 
  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
  IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
  FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
  AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
  LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
  OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
  SOFTWARE.
-->
 
<!--
 This is an example of a minimal Windows Service Wrapper configuration, which includes only mandatory options.
 
 This configuration file should be placed near the WinSW executable, the name should be the same.
 E.g. for myapp.exe the configuration file name should be myapp.xml
 
 You can find more information about the configuration options here: https://github.com/kohsuke/winsw/blob/master/doc/xmlConfigFile.md
 Full example: https://github.com/kohsuke/winsw/blob/master/examples/sample-allOptions.xml
-->
<service>
 
  <!-- ID of the service. It should be unique across the Windows system-->
  <id>myapp</id>
  <!-- Display name of the service -->
  <name>MyApp Service (powered by WinSW)</name>
  <!-- Service description -->
  <description>This service is a service created from a minimal configuration</description>
 
  <!-- Path to the executable, which should be started -->
  <executable>%BASE%\myExecutable.exe</executable>
 
</service>