Minor WTF: librust-winapi-dev wins the prize for the length of its "Provides" line under Debian's apt

Borderline sh-tpost here.

While "investigating packages" (read: "messing around") with apt, I seem to have discovered what is, on LMDE7 at least, the longest "Provides" sub-package list. Over 75000 characters.

    
$ /usr/bin/apt show librust-winapi-dev | grep '^Provides:' | wc -c

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

75650

  

The warning is irrelevant, but I left it in because it's a good thing to bear in mind.

It's also kind of funny because the only way you're going to be able to parse all of that output is with a tool of some kind.

If I count the commas with a suitable change to that pipeline, there are 1603, so it provides functionality for no less than 1604 other packages.

node-lodash-packages and node-babel7 are distant second and third with ~20000 and ~10000 characters (585 and 202 supported packages) respectively.

Ironically, none of these contain the phrase "kitchen sink".