Ruby Bindings to Chipmunk Physics Version 5.3.4

(C) Scott Lembcke, Beoran and John Mair (banisterfiend)

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
This is version 5.3.4.3 of the bindings for MRI Ruby 1.8.x and 1.9.x to
Chipmunk version 5.3.4.

(1) 1/10/09 Cross-Platform Gem built by John Mair (banisterfiend)
    * Just go: gem install chipmunk

FORUM:
  http://www.slembcke.net/forums

CONTACT:
  slembcke@gmail.com (also on Google Talk) for Chipmunk.
  beoran@rubyforge.org for these bindings to Ruby.

ABOUT CHIPMUNK:
  Chipmunk is a simple, lightweight and fast 2D rigid body physics library
  written in C by Slembcke. It's licensed under the unrestrictive, OSI approved
  MIT license.

ABOUT THESE RUBY BINDINGS:
  Although chipmunk comes with ruby bindings, they are not always up to date
  with regards to the functionality of the C library, and historically, they
  have been incompatible with recent versions of Ruby.

  Therefore, these bindings are intended to as an enhanced version with more
  features and better compatibility with recent versions of Ruby. They are also
  intended to be an alternative to the chipmunk-ffi bindings when performance
  is of the utmost importance, as it may be for games.

  The intent is for these bindings to be mostly source code compatible with the
  FFI bindings. Main exceptions are when it did not support the functionality I
  added yet. All this is documented by specs and by the html documentation.

  If you have any problems with these bindings, please contact the maintainer at
  beoran@rubyforge.org, or report the issue on the issue tracker:
  https://github.com/beoran/chipmunk/issues

REQUIREMENTS
  * Ruby 1.8.x or 1.9.x.
  * rspec for running the specs.
  * rake and rake-compiler for compiling the extension.
  

INSTALLATION
  Clone this repository, go into the ext directory and do:

  ruby extconf.rb ; make ; make install

  There is also a gem available for Linux and OS/X, and a binary gem for Windows,
  which you can try to install with:

  gem install chipmunk

  However, due to incompatilties in the latest versions of
  Rake, Rake-Compiler and rubygems, the gem method of installation may fail for
  you. This will be solved when these incompatibilities are solved by these
  upstream tools.

  These bindings vendor Chipmunk 5.3.4 with a few extra patches, so you don't
  need to have it installed.

DOCUMENTATION:
  Full handcrafted documentation based on the C documentation is available at:
  http://beoran.github.com/chipmunk/

CHANGES:
  * Since 5.3.4.4: Vendored chipmunk again, uncleanly. should compile well now.
  * Version 5.3.4.2 and 5.3.4.3 are broken, don't use them.
  * Since 5.3.4.1: Vendored chipmunk again, cleanly. Several bugfixes.
  * Since 5.1.0  : Much more of Chipmunk's functionality is wrapped. Unvendored
    chipmunk. More specs and documentation.
    
VERSIONING POLICY:
  Since 5.3.4.0 these bindings follow the version of chipmunk, followed by an 
  extra number for the version of the bindings. All major releases will be 
  backwards compatible in their API. The API may be enhanced in minor releases.
  The next planned release that is expected to partialy break backwards 
  compatibility with the 5.3.4 API will be 6.x.x.0, which will be based on
  the upstream C Chipmunk library version 6.x.x after that leaves beta.

KNOWN BUGS:
  * There are no bindings to SpaceHash since I think they are not so useful
    anymore since Chipmunk supports BB queries.
  * Some methods may crash with a segentation violation in case they are not
    used correctly, according to the underlying requirements of the C library.

CONTRACTING:
  Howling Moon Software (Slembke's company) is available for contracting if you
  want to make the physics in your game really stand out. Feel free to contact
  them through their webpage: http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/contracting.php

TODO:
  * Allow several constructors to be more flexible and take nil as a default
    argument.
  * Try to prevent segfauts on incorrect use of certain methods, if possible.
  * Get ready for chipmunk 5.3.5 and 6.x when they come out.
  * Some more specs.
  * Fix the gem when the upstream tools get fixed.

INFO FOR MAINTAINERS:

(1) 1/10/09 Cross-Platform Gem built by John Mair (banisterfiend)
    * Just go: gem install chipmunk

(2) Patched for 1.9.1 by Beoran (beoran@rubyforge.org)

(3) How to build the gems? (maintainers only)
    * Install rake-compiler (http://github.com/luislavena/rake-compiler)
    * Install 1.9.1 and 1.8.6 mingw ruby versions (instructions above)
    * Type: rake cross native gem RUBY_CC_VERSION=1.8.6:1.9.1
    * Upload new gems to rubyforge and gemcutter.