>Greg A. Woods writes:
>> I did try and find some statement on the WWW to the effect that all
>> components the base system must be fully and 100% functional within the
>> context of the base system only, but I couldn't.  Perhaps I missed it,

That is the goal, yes. But it doesn't always work that way.
For example, ELF-based ports weren't fully functional with just `the
base system' for, uh, years, and they won't all be, quite, until we
update the binutils in our tree to 2.9.1.