[tor-dev] Best way to reload config on Windows?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 10:59:34AM -0500, Holmes Wilson wrote:
> We???re building a Ricochet-inspired chat app, and there are situations where we want to create a new hidden service URL. On macOS and Linux we can send a SIGHUP to make Tor reload its config. What???s the best way to do this on Windows? 

Your best bet is to connect over the controlport and issue a 'signal
reload' command.

My guess is that you will already be wanting a controller connection,
for example to learn about Tor's bootstrap state or other warnings that
Tor wants to give you, so hopefully this is an easy answer. :)

That said, how did you get into the situation where you want Tor to reload
its config file? To me that sounds like you've made some weird UX choices
like asking the user to go edit their torrc file, and maybe there are
better choices -- for example, you could use setconf and saveconf over
the control port to configure the onion service.

https://spec.torproject.org/control-spec

Hope that helps,
--Roger