[jdright]

This. Take even CURL as an example, try to list its dependencies and you'll see how harder it is.

[tick_tock_tick]

libc that's it. Every other dependency for curl is optional.....

[jdright]

Try it. If you do not use any "optional" dependency it becomes pretty limited, almost useless for anything serious (eg. zlib, ssl)

[asveikau]

Zlib is pretty small.

TLS implementions are often giant hairballs but one that many things depend on. You can think of it as a somewhat "system level" dependency.

[jdright]

Being small is not in the question. Being there is. Otherwise we wouldn't be here discussing all hyper dependencies in detail as some of these are a lot smaller than zlib.

[asveikau]

I am late to reply. What I mean to say is zlib is a small self contained dependency, suitable for static linking, and no major dependency of its own, just math. A lot of more modern libraries and languages tend to have their small dependencies pull in a massive hydra of dependencies.