What's wrong with Environment.UserInteractive?

[Manuel Pallier]

Helpful information to include

Product name: NServiceBus

Version: 6.4.0

Stacktrace: -

Description:

I noticed that the documentation page "Windows Service Hosting" (https://docs.particular.net/nservicebus/hosting/windows-service) and it's sample page (https://docs.particular.net/samples/hosting/windows-service/) was recently modified to use some non-trivial code to detect if the application was started as a service or manually. What's wrong with the simple call to "Environment.UserInteractive" that was used before?

[Simon Cropp]

Manuel

We are moving over to supporting netstandard and dot net core. In testing those scenarios I discovered that Environment.UserInteractive always returns true on netcore. And it seems to be by design, or at least in discussions i read it was not discussed as a bug, eg https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/6024#issuecomment-310816129. The work around suggested by many people is "just pass in a command line param that indicates it is a service". TBH i was not a fan of this suggestion. So i coded a solution that works on both normal .net and netcore. Yes it would be possible for us to say "use Environment.UserInteractive if on normal .net", but i was concerned about the ramifications of people trying to have to do the same trouble shooting i did, when they eventually move to netcore and have forgotten the caveats on UserInteractive.

Any suggestions on a better approach? Anything i have missed?

[Manuel Pallier]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I'd just suggest to add a small note to the documentation pages that says something like "This is required because the popular approach to use Environment.UserInteractive does not work in .NET core".

Btw, the page https://docs.particular.net/nservicebus/hosting/nservicebus-host/ still shows the use of Environment.UserInteractive in the default critical error action of NServiceBus Host. Assuming you also changed the code in NServiceBus Host you'd might want to update that page too.

[Simon Cropp]

> I'd just suggest to add a small note to the documentation pages

Agreed. i will do that and post an update back here

> Assuming you also changed the code in NServiceBus Host you'd might want to update that page too.

Given the NSB host will not be supported on netcore i am not sure the change would be helpful

[Manuel Pallier]

Given the NSB host will not be supported on netcore i am not sure the change would be helpful

Ok, didn't know that. Then of course no change is needed there.

[Simon Cropp]

note added in front of the ServiceHelper snippet https://docs.particular.net/nservicebus/hosting/windows-service

[Manuel Pallier]

Thanks, but there seems to be a "no" or "not" missing in

Note that if there is intention to target .NET Core, then Environment.UserInteractive can be used.

[Andreas Ohlund]

Thanks Manuel, I've raised a PR to address this 

https://github.com/Particular/docs.particular.net/pull/3213

Cheers,

Andreas

[Simon Cropp]

Thanks for keeping us on our toes Manuel

BTW, although it is fully our responsibility, if u ever want to do small edits on pages there is an edit button near the top right of every page.