Add a CONTRIBUTING.md and add a note to the README about which versions of Ruby are supported

Author: aetherknight

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+# Contributing to recursive-open-struct
+
+Thanks for wanting to contribute a bug or code to recursive-open-struct!
+
+To help you out with understanding the direction and philosophy of this project
+with regards to to new features/how it should behave (and whether to file a bug
+report), please review the following contribution guidelines.
+
+## ROS Feature Philosophy
+
+Recursive-open-struct tries to be a minimal extension to the Ruby stdlib's
+`ostruct`/OpenStruct that allows for a nested set of Hashes (and Arrays) to
+initialize similarly structured OpenStruct-like objects. This has the benefit
+of creating arbitrary objects whose values can be accessed with accessor
+methods, similar to JavaScript Objects' dot-notation.
+
+To phrase it another way, RecursiveOpenStruct tries to behave as closely as
+possible to OpenStruct, except for the recursive functionality that it adds.
+
+If Recursive-open-struct were to add additional features (particularly methods)
+that are not implemented by OpenStruct, then those method names would not be
+available for use for accessing fields with the dot-notation that OpenStruct
+and RecursiveOpenStruct provide.
+
+For example, OpenStruct is not (at the time this is written) a
+subclass/specialization of Hash, so several methods implemented by Hash do not
+work with OpenStruct (and thus Recursive OpenStruct), such as `#fetch`.
+
+If you want to add features into RecursiveOpenStruct that would "pollute" the
+method namespace more than OpenStruct already does, consider creating your own
+subclass instead of submitting a code change to RecursiveOpenStruct itself.
+
+
+## Filing/Fixing Bugs and Requesting/Proposing New Features
+
+For simple bug fixes, feel free to provide a pull request. This includes bugs
+in stated features of RecursiveOpenStruct, as well as features added to
+OpenStruct in a newer version of Ruby that RecursiveOpenStruct needs custom
+support to handle.
+
+For anything else (new features, bugs that you want to report, and bugs that
+are difficult to fix), I recommend opening an issue first to discuss the
+feature or bug. I am fairly cautious about adding new features that might cause
+RecursiveOpenStruct's API to deviate radically from OpenStruct's (since it
+might introduce new reserved method names), and it is useful to discuss the
+best way to solve a problem when there are tradeoffs or imperfect solutions.
+
+When contributing code that changes behavior or fixes bugs, please include unit
+tests to cover the new behavior or to provide regression testing for bugs.
+Also, treat the unit tests as documentation --- make sure they are clean,
+clear, and concise, and well organized.

README.md

@@ -80,19 +80,23 @@ You may also install the gem manually:
 
 ## Contributing
 
-For simple bug fixes, feel free to provide a pull request.
-
-For anything else (new features, bugs that you want to report, and bugs that
-are difficult to fix), I recommend opening an issue first to discuss the
-feature or bug. I am fairly cautious about adding new features that might cause
-RecursiveOpenStruct's API to deviate radically from OpenStruct's (since it
-might introduce new reserved method names), and it is useful to discuss the
-best way to solve a problem when there are tradeoffs or imperfect solutions.
-
-When contributing code that changes behavior or fixes bugs, please include unit
-tests to cover the new behavior or to provide regression testing for bugs.
-Also, treat the unit tests as documentation --- make sure they are clean,
-clear, and concise, and well organized.
+If you would like to file or fix a bug, or propose a new feature, please review
+[CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md) first.
+
+
+## Supported Ruby Versions
+
+Recursive-open-struct attempts to support just the versions of Ruby that are
+still actively maintained. Once a given major/minor version of Ruby no longer
+receives patches, they will no longer be supported (but recursive-open-struct
+may still work). I usually update the travis.yml file to reflect this when
+preparing for a new release or do some other work on recursive-open-struct.
+
+I also try to update recursive-open-struct to support new features in
+OpenStruct itself as new versions of Ruby are released. However, I don't
+actively monitor the status of this, so a newer feature might not work. If you
+encounter such a feature, please file a bug or a PR to fix it, and I will try
+to cut a new release of recursive-open-struct quickly.
 
 
 ## SemVer Compliance