dependencyminimal

dependencyminimal is a software design philosophy and set of practices focused on reducing external dependencies in a project. The aim is to minimize risk, lower maintenance costs, and increase portability and security by relying on stable, well-supported foundations and by avoiding unnecessary libraries and services.

Its core principle is to simplify the dependency surface: prefer standard language features and first-party components, minimize transitive dependencies, and pin versions to known-good releases. When a dependency is unavoidable, dependencyminimal advocates clear interfaces, documented rationale, and strategies to replace or isolate the component without large rewrites.

Practitioners perform regular dependency audits, track the scope of what is included, and apply modular architectures that contain dependencies within well-defined boundaries. Techniques include writing adapters or shims to isolate third-party code, favoring plain data interchange formats, and documenting the exact guarantees provided by each dependency.

Benefits include reduced attack surface, faster builds and deployments, easier licensing and compliance, and more predictable behavior across environments. Trade-offs include potential duplication of functionality, longer development cycles, and the need for governance to decide which capabilities are worth externalizing and which should be built in-house.

dependencyminimal is commonly applied in embedded and long-lived systems, regulated domains, and projects seeking long-term stability. A typical example is a small command-line tool that relies on the standard library only or on a small set of audited, minimal dependencies.

See also: software dependency management; minimalism; supply chain security.