How to run explainshell locally on Windows?

[Paciupa]

Thanks for the great tool!

I'm learning Bash and I think explainshell is even more useful on Windows, where there are no man / info pages (without WSL / MSYS). So here is an adapted version:

Running explainshell locally on Windows with uv:

# From an elevated session (to install in %ProgramFiles%)
winget install --interactive Git.Git # If it's not installed yet)
winget install --interactive jqlang.jq
winget install --interactive GNU.Wget2
winget install --interactive ezwinports.make
winget install --interactive Meta.Zstandard

# Already had wget2, so I've just symlinked it instead of looking for an actual port.
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.local\bin\wget.exe" -Value `
"$env:ProgramFiles\WinGet\Packages\GNU.Wget2_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe\wget2.exe"

gh repo clone idank/explainshell
cd explainshell

# Worked even with Python 3.14.7
uv venv
.venv\Scripts\activate.ps1

uv pip install --compile-bytecode -r requirements-dev.txt
make download-latest-db # from Git Bash

Set-Item -Path env:$DB_PATH -Value 'explainshell.db'
python runserver.py # directly, instead of `make serve`

# These also work:
python explainshell\db_check.py
python -m explainshell.manager show stats

# Afterwards:
Remove-Item -Path env:DB_PATH

While setting this up I noticed that if $DB_PATH is not set, the server still tries to use None and views seem to work, but they throw an error something went wrong... this was logged and will be checked. So would be nice to fix it.