Support for common IoT libraries

[shaggygi]

This is not for a specific feature, but more to gain synergy on possibly getting other core APIs created or central location for related "How-Tos" that would help while coding APIs/apps more specific to IoT/hardware.

For example, Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) conversions are common in many devices for displays and dates. While this conversion is simple, it might seem redundant to include helper methods in each binding API where needed. A new specific API for this might be overkill, so maybe it would be better to have topic created in a markdown file as a quick reference.

It would be nice to offer support down to the bit level. Here is a previous thread on CoreFxLab repo that appears to be a good start for this.

Thoughts? /cc @terrajobst @stephentoub

[joperezr]

For this one, one thing I was planning to do is to get common static methods like the ones you suggest, and have that code live on a Common folder under src/devices. Once we have it there, then different device bindings can just add the specific .cs file they need to the Compile item if they require that functionality/method in their binding. In the end, we will package every bidning (and the common code as well) into one single library Iot.Device.Bindings.dll, so this would be a good way to avoid redundancy.

[shaggygi]

@joperezr this makes sense and to be clear these were created at different times with different things in mind (although they now seem to overlap). APIs like BCD seem to fit more with the scenario of the graphics API in #178.

The bit manipulation API could also be useful outside IoT APIs, but still fits here as well. You can close this or #178 if you think only one is needed for the topic.

[joperezr]

I'll close this one because I feel is the more general question of where to put common code, which we now have an answer for. I'll keep #178 open to track the graphics library progress.