What is the purpose of the "Views: views_view" component?
What is the purpose of [the "Views: views_view"] component?


As you suspected, to allow views to be exported into a features module.


  Why isn't showing any settings?


I do not know. One possible explanation is, that all the enabled views are provided by other modules via an implementation of hook_views_default_views(). The Features module itself exports views by writing an implementation of hook_views_default_views(), so the Views module cannot distinguish between the two versions of the view. That's why the Features module does not allow views to be exported, that are provided by other modules.