# Starting a Shoes application

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/starting-a-shoes-application/155573>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 13, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/starting-a-shoes-application/155573 "2008-12-13T19:30:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tbaustert](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ecae2f/32.png) [@tbaustert](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tbaustert)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/starting-a-shoes-application/155573/1 "2008-12-13T19:30:07Z")

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Hello there. I’m starting playing with Shoes ([http://shoooes.net/](http://shoooes.net/)) and  
I’m having a bit of a problem with understanding how a program is  
executed.

All the program advertised there look just like: Shoes.app{}, but you  
cannot run such program just like that. You have to run shoes.exe from  
the system prompt and pass the script file as a parameter.

Now, is there a way to start a Shoes application from Ruby? I mean, to  
do something like: require ‘shoes’; Shoes.app{}, and simply run this as  
a Ruby program? I cannot find any information about that.

Apart from this, is there something like a custom Shoes startup script?  
For instance, I have by own directory with include files and I keep the  
path in RUBYLIB environment variable. But it is not added to the $: if I  
run a Shoes app. I’d like to make a script that would add the directory  
to the load path each time I run a Shoes app. Or is there a better way  
to do it?

Thanks for help.  
T.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tbaustert](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ecae2f/32.png) [@tbaustert](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tbaustert)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 11:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/starting-a-shoes-application/155573/2 "2009-03-27T11:43:06Z")

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Having the same problem here, so I thought I’d raise it. Is this normal  
behavior, or some kind of problem with my Vista x64 installation?

Thomas B. wrote:

> All the program advertised there look just like: Shoes.app{}, but you  
> cannot run such program just like that. You have to run shoes.exe from  
> the system prompt and pass the script file as a parameter.
> 
> Now, is there a way to start a Shoes application from Ruby? I mean, to  
> do something like: require ‘shoes’; Shoes.app{}, and simply run this as  
> a Ruby program? I cannot find any information about that.
> 
> Apart from this, is there something like a custom Shoes startup script?  
> For instance, I have by own directory with include files and I keep the  
> path in RUBYLIB environment variable. But it is not added to the $: if I  
> run a Shoes app. I’d like to make a script that would add the directory  
> to the load path each time I run a Shoes app. Or is there a better way  
> to do it?