Currently yii2 package depend on quite a lot of other packages. Some bower packages are required even if I just want to build APIs and use them with something like AngularJS.
Any idea how I can get have a "lite" version of Yii 2 Framework?
Thank you.
Currently it’s not possible. All these bower packages will be installed but won’t be used so you’re losing nothing but a disk space which is cheap nowadays. In 2.1 it is planned to have less dependencies for the core.
The lack of a lite version probably has more to do with Yii’s aggressive campaign of keeping abreast of the latest OOP improvements to PHP and the various database engines. And keeping abreast in unison with PHP improvements since the framework’s inception has been remarkable in comparison to other frameworks.
You could probably roll your own lite version package using PHing, but maintenance becomes your never ending problem.
That’s great news 
I use Slim Framework for APIs, I would to use Yii 2.1.