Add LICENSE and README.md

Author: grantjenks

LICENSE

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+Copyright 2025 Grant Jenks
+
+Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use
+this file except in compliance with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the
+License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed
+under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR
+CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

README.md

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+# ArrayDeque
+
+ArrayDeque is a fast, array-backed deque implementation for Python written in
+C. It aims to provide high-performance double-ended queue operations similar to
+Python’s built-in collections.deque with a straightforward, efficient design.
+
+
+## Features
+
+- Fast appends and pops at both ends.
+- Efficient random access and in-place item assignment.
+- Full support for iteration, slicing (via __getitem__ and __setitem__),
+  and common deque methods.
+- A comprehensive CPython C-extension for optimal performance.
+- Includes a detailed benchmark comparing performance with collections.deque.
+
+
+## Installation
+
+There are two ways to install ArrayDeque.
+
+
+### Installation via pip
+
+There are pre-built wheels available on PyPI, install it directly:
+
+  pip install arraydeque
+
+
+### Building from source
+
+Clone the repository and run:
+
+  git clone https://github.com/yourusername/arraydeque.git
+  cd arraydeque
+  pip install -e .
+
+This will compile the C-extension and install the module into your Python
+environment.
+
+
+## Usage
+
+After installation, you can use ArrayDeque just like a regular Python deque:
+
+  from arraydeque import ArrayDeque
+  
+  # Create an ArrayDeque instance
+  dq = ArrayDeque()
+  
+  # Append items on the right
+  dq.append(10)
+  dq.append(20)
+  
+  # Append items on the left
+  dq.appendleft(5)
+  
+  # Access by index
+  print(dq[0])  # -> 5
+  
+  # Pop elements
+  print(dq.pop())     # -> 20
+  print(dq.popleft()) # -> 5
+
+ArrayDeque supports the standard deque API including extend, extendleft (which
+reverses the order), clear, and iteration.
+
+
+## Benchmarking
+
+A benchmark script ([benchmark.py](benchmark.py)) is provided to compare the
+performance of ArrayDeque against Python's built-in collections.deque. The
+benchmark runs tests for operations such as append, appendleft, pop, popleft,
+random access, and a mixed workload. Each operation is run several times and
+the median is reported to give an accurate performance comparison.
+
+After running the benchmark (see instructions below), a plot (saved as
+`plot.png`) is generated that visually compares the two implementations using a
+fivethirtyeight style bar chart.
+
+To run the benchmark:
+
+  python benchmark.py
+
+Inspect `plot.png` for a detailed performance comparison.
+
+
+## Testing
+
+Tests are implemented using the standard `unittest` framework. The test suite
+verifies all core functionalities of the ArrayDeque module and ensures that
+edge cases such as underflow are handled properly.
+
+To run the tests:
+
+  python test_arraydeque.py
+
+Alternatively, if you’re using [tox](https://tox.readthedocs.io/), just run:
+
+  tox
+
+The project’s CI workflows (GitHub Actions) automatically build and test
+ArrayDeque on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows.
+
+
+## Continuous Integration
+
+This project uses GitHub Actions to automate testing, linting, and release management.
+
+- [Release Workflow](.github/workflows/release.yml): Builds wheels for Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows, then publishes to PyPI.
+- [Test Workflow](.github/workflows/test.yml): Runs tests on multiple Python versions.
+- [tox.ini](tox.ini): Configures testing environments and lint/format tasks using [ruff](https://beta.ruff.rs/).
+
+
+## Development
+
+To set up your development environment:
+
+1. Clone the repository.
+2. Create a virtual environment:
+
+     python -m venv env
+     source env/bin/activate   # On Unix/macOS
+     env\Scripts\activate      # On Windows
+
+3. Install the development dependencies:
+
+     pip install tox
+
+4. To format and lint the code, run:
+
+     tox -e format
+     tox -e lint
+
+
+## License
+
+This project is distributed under the Apache2 License.