Augment developer documentation

[Casey Jao]

First of all, my apologies in advance if this is not the right forum to
post this.

As the Ubuntu Snappy project works to build out a comprehensive platform
for third party application developers, it might be worthwhile to augment
its developer portal with documentation of not only Ubuntu-specific
features, but also the standard GNU/Linux APIs (which, from what I can
understand, will be shipped as Snappy "frameworks") that application
developers will need. Most commonly required libraries are documented on
their project web sites, and developers would likely appreciate having at
least the links to the documentation organized in a central location.

One advantage of Windows or OS X to developers is that those platforms
provide not only an comprehensive set of system frameworks but also
thorough documentation for all of their APIs. From low-level kernel
interfaces for writing device drivers to cryptographic services to audio
and image handling toolkits, those programming interfaces are all
conveniently documented in a central location (see for example
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/) where a beginning
programmer can learn all about the platform.

While equivalents to virtually all of those APIs can be found on GNU/Linux
systems, until recently there hasn't been a serious effort to define a
"GNU/Linux platform" that developers can easily target. Linux application
developers seem to be expected to scavenge the internet to learn what
libraries to use and how to use them. Beginning developers therefore face a
steeper learning curve for Linux than for those other platforms.

Casey
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