merging master into experiimental

[dellams]

Note

Medium Risk
Moderate risk because it changes CI orchestration by adding a new test-starapi-client job and making release builds depend on it; failures or environment assumptions in the PowerShell test suite could block packaging. Other changes are documentation and .gitignore hygiene with minimal runtime impact.

Overview
CI now runs the STARAPIClient automated suite by adding a new test-starapi-client job that executes OASIS Omniverse/STARAPIClient/run_star_api_test_suite.ps1, uploads TestResults/ artifacts, and is required for build-and-package.

Repo hygiene and docs were expanded: .gitignore now excludes common deployment secrets/config (e.g. .env, hardhat.config.js, deployed-addresses.json, *.key/*.pem) and STAR CLI publish/install artifacts; a stale Dockerfile.star-api.new was removed; and multiple new Docs/Devs/* guides were added/linked covering smart-contract deployment and cross-platform getting-started/installer workflows.

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