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”.
Looks like that package was removed from Debian. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was due to not following Debian policy.
Here are the first 100 entries:
I haven’t reviewed the relevant policies lately, but I suspect those should have been separate packages, not thousands of entries in a single package’s
Provides:field.