Instructions for creating a nanovna-saver.exe Windows executable

[t52ta6ek]

I, like many of you here, have probably been hoping we might see an "official" Windows executable released for this application again from the great team maintaining this project. In the meantime, I gave it a try using the same steps I used for my own work on this app in the past. The process still seems to work.

The instructions below will walk you thru step-by-step how to create your own Windows executable.

You will need to install git-bash and python3 onto your Windows PC.

Install git-bash (I simply accepted the default options on all screens.)
https://www.git-scm.com/ --or-- https://gitforwindows.org/

In your Windows File Explorer, view the Git installation directory.
C:\Program Files\Git

Look for git-bash.exe, select it, right-click->Send to->Desktop to place a shortcut on your desktop.

Next, install Python. It is important that Python be downloaded and installed from python.org rather than from the Microsoft Store. Although Python from the Microsoft Store allowed the .py file to be executed, it was not able to create the .exe without Windows Defender reporting false positives. Judging from web searches, it seems this is a known problem people sometimes encounter. Maybe I'll try and figure out what's going on there in the future. But for now, this is the bare minimum to generate the Windows executable.

Install python (Again, I simply accepted the default options on all screens.)
https://www.python.org/

Run git-bash by double-clicking that shortcut you created above.

(The following steps are now performed in the git-bash terminal.)

cd $USERPROFILE/Desktop
mkdir work
cd work
git clone https://github.com/NanoVNA-Saver/nanovna-saver
cd nanovna-saver
py -m venv $USERPROFILE/.venv_nano
. $USERPROFILE/.venv_nano/Scripts/activate
py -m pip install . pyinstaller auto-py-to-exe
pyinstaller --noconfirm --onefile --windowed \
--icon "$USERPROFILE/Desktop/work/nanovna-saver/icon_48x48.ico" \
"$USERPROFILE/Desktop/work/nanovna-saver/nanovna-saver.py"
ls dist

(Hopefully, after that last command, you should now see the nanovna-saver.exe executable! If so, you're done. You may copy this to your Desktop for example.)
cp dist/nanovna-saver.exe $USERPROFILE/Desktop

The application takes a LONG time to start up. Be patient! Not sure what's going on there but I suspect because Python is an interpreted language, the exectuable probably contains a copy of Python itself plus the nanovna-saver application. :-/

Hope that helps!