I agree that you should avoid too many dependences. When I need dependencies, I usually try to reduce how many I need. Often, when I do need dependencies, I will include them with the program (which avoids the problem of breaking compatibility) and they should be small and should not have any of their own dependencies (other than possibly the standard library); often they will be programs that I wrote by myself. Dependencies will sometimes be optional, and those that cannot be included often should be made to be possible to replace with an alternative implementation.