I don't really care either way about this, but to me, seems like a classic case of bloat, where the program is doing too many things at once.

It makes more sense to have a core app that does the basic functionality and can be run from CLI, and then separate out the the various components that perform different duties and require more dependencies etc, in a modular architecture. It's just better software design and you avoid a lot of pitfalls and hassle to end-users and integrators - just like the issue described by the OP.