Hi Steve, I think you are suffering from (and spreading) the common misunderstanding that Dist::Zilla is distributed with the distributions it is used to build. Dist::Zilla is simply a distribution-building and -packaging tool, designed for CPAN, and the distributions it builds are simply conformant CPAN distros. No bloat whatsoever, unless you count a dist.ini file that's sometimes left in the distro.

Here's the entire MANIFEST from Dancer2::Logger::LogAny, which is packaged and distributed with Dist::Zilla:

# This file was automatically generated by Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Manife
+st v6.010.
Changes
LICENSE
MANIFEST
META.json
META.yml
Makefile.PL
README.md
cpanfile
example/README
example/app.pl
example/config.yml
lib/Dancer2/Logger/LogAny.pm
t/00-load.t
t/config.yml
t/logger.t
xt/pod-coverage.t
[download]

Installers of this module have no need of Dist::Zilla or its dependencies. (And note that the source repo only has two extra files, a couple of .ini config files.

(What you may be recalling is the pain a developer can feel when wanting to contribute to a distribution that is packaged with Dist::Zilla, when you have to have it installed to see that your changes lead to a correct build.)

Hope this helps!