In article <xof8ybrd5yl.fsf@shoal.pdc.kth.se>,
	joda@pdc.kth.se (Johan Danielsson) writes:
> The Grey Wolf <greywolf@starwolf.com> writes:
> 
>> 	It is potentially necessary in single-user mode, and so does
>> 	  not belong under /usr
> 
> Maybe I've missed exactly what it is used for. Isn't it just
> documentation?

The way I remember the motivation for "/etc/release":  without it,
there was no way for a script to know the version of the installed
system.  "uname" only returns the version of the kernel, which has
little to do with whether or not a particular facility is present.
(That explains the first line, anyway; the rest *is* just
documentation.)  For that purpose, it makes sense to associate it
with the base set.  It could arguably go with the comp set, but
"comp" isn't independent of "base", and "base" seems nicer to me.

I really don't see a problem with installing this one file of "base"
into "/etc", either.

-- 
Frederick