> All these things together is why I believe that systems like NixOS or Guix are the future (but of course there might be other developments in that space).
That, or actually keeping control over the dependencies?
I think it is always wise to constrain unneeded dependencies. And this counts even more in embedded systems.
But on the other hand, programming artefacts, languages and their library systems compete in terms of features, which will usually lead to an ever growing number of dependencies. At least this is what we observe. Even if not all of this is really necessary, this would probably be hard to reverse in general.
That, or actually keeping control over the dependencies?