ServiceInstall reinstalling on every run

[shareonline]

I am at a loss right now, and maybe think this is a shortcoming in MSI in general, so would be glad to get some help for this.

I have the following service install

	<ComponentGroup Id="ServiceConfigurationComponents">
		<Component Id="ServiceNameServiceComponent"
				   Guid="E0C12345-6789-ABCD-1234-56789ABCDEF2"
				   NeverOverwrite="no">

			<File Id="ServiceNameService"
				  Source="bin\Release\ServiceNameService\ServiceNameService.Client.Service.exe"
				  Checksum="no"
				  Vital="yes" KeyPath="yes" />

			<ServiceInstall Id="ServiceNameService"
							Name="ServiceNameService"
							DisplayName="ServiceNameServiceBackground Service"
							Description="ServiceNameServiceservice for background tasks."
							Start="auto"
							Type="ownProcess"
							ErrorControl="normal" />

			<util:ServiceConfig
				ServiceName="ServiceNameService"
				FirstFailureActionType="restart"
				SecondFailureActionType="restart"
				ThirdFailureActionType="none"
				RestartServiceDelayInSeconds="60"
				ResetPeriodInDays="1" />

			<ServiceControl
				Id="ServiceControl"
				Name="ServiceNameService"
				Start="install"
				Stop="both"
				Remove="uninstall"
				Wait="yes" />
		</Component>
	</ComponentGroup>
</Fragment>

My "issue" is that i have created a single.exe file .net 9 self-contained project. This exe should be installed as a service.
But it should also be possible for users to change service settings in windows (Log-on as etc), and then when installing an update to the MSI, The service should stop, overwrite the .exe file with the new version inside the new MSI, and then start the service.

I have tried with the above, custom actions hack (only install service through sc.exe if it doesn't already exist). And i really can't get this to work.
Can this be done somehow? Because the inside the component with the service i have read have to be part of the service component.

[bevanweiss]

It's not really the current design intent of the ServiceInstall element. And it would depend on how you've authored your upgrade packages around what occurs there.
It sounds like potentially what you might be after is more of a PATCH process, where the patches don't do the ServiceInstall, they only install updated service files (but require the original installer which did configure the Service to have already been installed).

There are likely other ways to handle this, like having a condition to prevent the uninstall action of the ServiceInstall if it's a UPGRADE type of action. You would need to spin the ServiceInstall out into its own Component (away from the versioned files) however.. and hence would likely need to connect it to a registry value KeyPath or something similar (which is file version agnostic).
But you'd need to think carefully about situations like what a REPAIR should do, and how end users might restore things back to 'a working state' if they've changed a bunch of settings against the service which stopped it working correctly.