Testing the utils

[agamdua]

From commit messages:

Added: tests and docstrings for utils
Two utils methods were lacking coverage:
* `get_attr_from_base_classes`
* `get_class_name_with_new_suffix`

Added a `.coveragerc` so that coverage would not be tracking coverage of
actual tests code.

Docstrings were added for future reference.

Updated: gitignore for vim files

As part of  a review:

* get_attr_from_base_classes used kwargs to get the `default`. Now
`default` is an explicit kwarg, updated docstring and code to reflect
this
* updated docstring for `get_class_name_with_new_suffix` with an example

[agamdua]

Wooohoooo!