Low level library for common functions needed by different scripts and libraries

• This should run on Windows and Linux in both Python 2.7 and Python 3
• .vscode/launch.json contains a launch configuration to run the tests from VSCode
  • if windows & Python 2.7, the following is required
    • pip intall mock
  • you might have to modify python.pythonPath in .vscode/launch.json
• to enable git commit hooks, run the following:
  • git config core.hooksPath .githooks
  • pip install pep8
  • pip install flake8