Starter kits and templates are widely used in software projects to speed up initial setup, but they can pull in many unnecessary dependencies for a particular project. It's important to practice dependency pruning — periodically taking a hard look at these dependencies and pruning any that are not used. This helps reduce build and deploy times and decrease the project's attack surface by removing potential vulnerabilities. Although this isn't a new technique, given the increasing frequency of attacks on software supply chains, we advocate for renewed attention to it.
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